


Vulnerable

by Serena_Rose



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Minor physical torture, PTSD, Platonic Soulmates, Psychological Torture, Sick Fic, mentions of Eleanor/Chidi, minor jason/janet, tw: child neglect, tw: quarantine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:07:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 46,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23300644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serena_Rose/pseuds/Serena_Rose
Summary: An alternative take on Tinker, Tailor, Demon, Spy (S4x4). Eleanor is struck down with a mysterious illness which threatens the experiment as well as her sanity. The only one who can take care of her is her demon buddy, Michael. But can she trust him?
Relationships: Michael (The Good Place) & Eleanor Shellstrop
Comments: 20
Kudos: 75





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> You guys know the rule. Every fic at the moment is a Quarantine fic because, you know, topical events. Obviously a warning in place if events feel too close to home for anyone struggling at this time. This is the first fic I've written in several years after falling in love with this show and fascinating relationship of its two main leads, which in this fic I've written as platonic but those seeking shippiness are free to squint if they wish.
> 
> Part one is mostly fluff. Part two is where things will get intense. I hope you enjoy and stay safe.

When it first happens, it takes about two seconds until she realizes it even _has_ happened. Then she freezes, clutching the cup of coffee in her hands.

"Did I just cough?" She asks the only other person in the room, aside from the Accountant entombed in the glowing obelisk.

Mindy hums in agreement from her position on the sofa.

"Sure did."

Her hostess doesn't even bother to look up from her trashy celeb magazine. Apparently, this anomaly pails in comparison to Kayne West’s bust up with his own mirror.

Eleanor almost lets it slip by until she coughs again. Now she can’t get past the stinging in her throat.

“Why am I coughing in the afterlife? It’s not like you can get sick here, right?”

“Well not in the real Good Place, I bet.” Mindy still doesn’t look up from her magazine; “But just like you can get hurt here and in the Bad Place, yeah, getting sick is still a thing. It’s happened to me a bunch of times.”

Eleanor pours her coffee down the sink, suddenly not keen on it.

“How bad does it get?”

Finally, Mindy gives her a passing glance.

“Well, you’re in the Medium Place, so you can get like an annoying cough or a bunged-up nose or a forking come down after trying to snort a shirt ton of coke. But it’s always like; not so bad that you feel like you’re dying…again, but it’s also not bad enough that you have an excuse to lie in bed and watch Netflix. I mean I _tried_ and it just felt like cheating!”

That manages to get a sigh of relief out of Eleanor.

“Thank God! With everything going on right now, I cannot afford to be sick.”

“You literally can! You are not earning money and you do not need to spend money!” Mindy actually seems invested at this point, looking at her lodger like she’s crazy; “So what if you get a bit of a cold? Use it to give yourself a break.”

“Trust me, I used to be all for fake coughing down the phone to my boss to get out of work but sadly, I am the boss now. And I’d have to call bullshirt on myself for trying to slack off.” She cuts herself off again with yet another cough and rubs at her throat; “I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I’m actually working for something more important than money. Like, the fate of humanity!”

Now Mindy rolls her eyes, having had her fill of actually talking to her reluctant lodger; “I swear if I hear the words ‘fate of humanity’ one more time, I’m gonna get Derek to bury me in the garden beneath my own stash.”

She doesn’t expect Mindy to understand. The woman had spent god knows how many centuries living in her own echo chamber in between being randomly invaded by Eleanor and her friends. She was content in her indifference and isolation, as far as Eleanor could tell. Attempts had been made to talk her into helping the Experiment in her back yard, the most compelling being to help make sure they never have to annoy her again, but she still took the option to stay in her attic most of the time. It was enough for Eleanor just to get her to come out for a quick chat in between working. Sometimes it was just nice for Eleanor to have a sound board to voice her feelings to who wasn’t Michael, Janet, Tahani or even Jason.

Ever since she had walked in them discussing a potential mutiny – which she knew was an extreme way to phrase it but it made them feel guilty, which helped – Eleanor had been making more of an effort to keep her shit together and stay on top of things. Michael’s little encouraging speech had given her the boost she needed, then Tahani and the others had apologized, so everything was cool. Except when it wasn’t.

Because things were still going wrong. Their humans were not improving as quickly as they needed them to. The Bad Place kept messing with them. And she had to face the love of her life every day without him having a clue who she was.

Chidi believed this could work, enough for him to sacrifice his memory for it.

Michael believed she was the _only one_ to make it work.

Oh, how great it would be to go back to that sweet era of her first life when she didn’t care about letting people down. Fun times.

She covers another raspy cough with her elbow.

“I’m guessing you don’t have any medicine I can take.” She asks Mindy one last question before heading off to the Architect’s office.

“There’s cough syrup above the fridge. But it’s that awful stuff which smells like glue, feels like glue, tastes like glue and I’m pretty sure is just medicated glue. I usually just wait for my body to get rid of it.”

Eleanor nods. Sounds good to her.

*

It’s another week before things start to get worse.

_Stupid, useless, hot, undead body._

She manages to work through it as best she can. It’s great to always have Janet on hand to pass a glass of water when needed, then progressing to a tissue when her nose starts to run, until it reaches a point where she can see Janet’s usual pleasant face starting to crinkle with worry and Eleanor tries to call on her less.

At one point during a speech to the neighborhood to announce everyone being allowed to ride a Griffin, she briskly passes the mic to Tahani before she’s properly finished so she can make a quick exit. Not a good idea to let the test subjects see their supposedly ethereal leader have a coughing fit.

Michael follows her into the nearest Frozen Yoghurt shop (Yo Go Gurt!) where she throws back some water down her burning throat.

“Everything okay?” He asks in that annoying paternal voice he sometimes puts on.

_You know it’s not. You know I’m fucking this up – oh I’m so glad I can still curse in my thoughts – and you know cornering me won’t help!_

“M’fine!” She wipes some of the spilled liquid from her lips; “It’s just a Medium Place cold, Mindy said it only lasts a few days. Someone could’ve warned me there was disease in the afterlife though!”

“Well that would be the Department of Pestilence doing, I was actually an intern there in my teen years. Man, we got up to some wild stuff. My favorite was testing to see how much puss you could get into a boil before it bursts!”

Eleanor gives him that look to let him know he’s reminiscing fondly about his torturing days again.

“Anyway, yeah, plagues are common form of torture in the Bad Place and it’s no surprise Mindy gets the odd middle ground sickness bug,” Michael explains; “But Janet made sure to decontaminate the neighborhood before we started, we didn’t want to risk any of the test subjects getting ill. You shouldn’t be sick.”

“Dude, relax! It’s just a cold!” She tries to brush him off; “Maybe Janet only did a scan from outside Mindy’s house and I caught it from inside, or maybe from that weird jar in her fridge I probably shouldn’t have tried a spoonful of but Jason dared me to, either way don’t worry-“

Eleanor tries to make it for the door again but Michael steps in front of her, his hand on her forearm.

“I am worried! I’m worried you’re pushing yourself too hard and that you’re going to burn out when we need you at your best!” He tells her, firmly.

“Excuse me? You were the one telling me to ‘get my shirt together because we’ve got work to do’!” She throws back at him.

“And part of getting said shirt together is making sure you’re not risking your health and the experiment by trying to show off! So go home, put your feet up and let us handle-“

Jason rushes through the door, almost out of breath.

“Guys! We got a problem! Brent slapped his Griffin on the butt and its now flying with his foot in its beak!”

“Argh, you see what you made me miss?!” Eleanor berates Michael before following Jason out; “C’mon, bud, if we get there quick enough we might see him cry!”

She hears Michael shout her name as she leaves and ignores him.

Obviously, she’s not really planning on basking in Brent’s humiliation. Much. In fact, it might provide an opportunity for him to be rescued by Chidi or the others and, thus, experience some gratitude that starts to change him. Make him feel like he owes it to someone else to be good as they did to him. That’s how it all started with her and Chidi. Brent is an ass but if she was capable of change then he must be too.

Michael doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

She’s got this. She’s got this.

*

“So the Fly Your Own Griffin Day was a bit of a bust, I’ll admit,” Eleanor says later that evening, “But Brent did thank Simone when she handed him his lost shoe.”

“And he only sounded a little sarcastic.” Jason adds.

“Exactly! It’s all about the positives!” Eleanor says before coughing again.

They’re in Michael’s, or rather _her_ , office again. Tahani and Jason are sitting on the edge of the desk while Michael stands beside the photo of Doug. The white board behind Eleanor contains a list of their planned events to help move the group along in their experiment. She quickly scribbles the results of today’s one before a bunch of spots flash in her vision and the marker falls from her hand.

“I got it!” Jason goes to grab it.

“Don’t sniff it.” Michael quickly says.

“Aww.” Jason stops.

Eleanor leans down to pick it up herself; “Sorry, I just…Uhm, can we turn down the thermostat, maybe Janet?”

“There is no heater. I have the neighborhood temperature set to ‘crisp Spring night’, while indoors is always pleasantly tepid.” Janet explains after popping into the room.

Except Eleanor feels as though it’s set to Scorching Desert.

She can feel Michael’s eyes boring into her as he stands with his arms crossed, his brow creased with judgement above his glasses. Him being silently cross is worse than him vocalizing it.

“Darling, are you all right? You look whiter than the entire Oscar nominations combined.” Tahani finally comments.

Eleanor goes to make a dodging reply before Michael opens his big mouth.

“She’s sick.”

“I’m NOT sick! I’m just a little…exhausted, okay?” She deflects, anger starting to bubble up.

“So is that sweat coming out of your nose?” Jason asks, most likely wanting to seriously know.

Eleanor rolls her eyes; “Sure, whatever. Anyway, back to y’know, SAVING HUMANITY!”

“There’s no need to rush, we’re only a few months in. If you want to take some time off to recover, you really should.” Janet advises.

“If you’d like, I can make you an amazing cress soup that used to always warm me up and clear my head when my auntie Nigella Lawson came around to cheer me up whenever I was poorly!” Tahani offers.

“And you can borrow my Nintendo, so long as you don’t mess up my Animal Crossing village. I just finished covering my town in Jaguars colors.” Jason also tries to….help?

There’s a tiny part of Eleanor, that voice in her head she knows she should listen to, telling her that her friends are just trying to show their support, even if every word they say is like a drill in her skull at the moment. She rubs at her head, putting on a smirk.

“And while I’m eating possibly the sexiest British soup ever and playing video games, what’s gonna happen to the experiment, huh? What about Chidi and the rest….who I don’t care about as much, mostly what about Chidi?!” She can feel herself getting flustered, strands of hair sticking to her forehead.

It was never a good look for her.

“We’ll all make sure the experiment goes on as normal. It’s not going to fall apart if you take a few days to rest. It’s a little insulting you don’t trust us to handle it. You’re not the only one at work here, Shellstrop.” Michael lectures her.

“Remember, Eleanor. You can’t spell Leader, without Team.” Jason states.

Tahani shakes her head; “He’s…almost got it.”

“We’re your friends, we just want to help.” Janet affirms.

_Help get me out of the way so you can all take over and do a better job than me?! It’s not like I haven’t set the bar too high!_

No, that’s not true. She knows that.

It’s so hard to think straight when everything feels so hot. The dress she’s wearing feels suddenly tight and it’s as if there’s a helmet made of burning iron constricting around her head.

“Look, guys, I appreciate your concern, really I do! But I’ve not been sick since I was six years old and there’s no way I’m letting it take me down now when I’m now…technically three hundred and somethin’. So, if you can all kindly shut the fork up and let me get on with this, we can stop wasting time.” She turns back to the whiteboard, sending the world spinning; “Next event! How about…learning to water…bend…I-Is this pen supposed to melt?”

That’s how it looks to her as the spots take over again and the ground seems to vanish beneath her feet. She crumples to her knees, hearing the faint echoes of her friends calling her name in panic, followed by Michael’s hands catching her back, before everything goes dark.

*

_“What are you moping about now?”_

_“My head hurts, Mommy.”_

_“You want a real headache? Have a kid! Better yet, have a kid with a douche-bag lameo who only looked hot after six shots of tequila. Until then you can’t complain!”_

*

She wakes up to a headache. No kids and no douche boyfriend. But there’s no denying the headache.

It’s not so much a pounding pain or even a hangover. Just a heavy, groggy sensation as she struggles to open her eyes. The first thing she sees is Michael’s face swimming into her vision. He still has that frown on him as if he’s going to give one of his ‘immortal being who knows so much better’ lecture. That doesn’t help the headache.

She’s comfortable, at least. Someone put her to bed. Someone…put her in pajamas.

“Wha’ happened?” Eleanor mumbles, feeling even weaker than before; “How’d I get-“

“You’re at Mindy’s. We thought it best to keep you away from the neighborhood for a while.” Michael tells her.

She tries to sit up only to find her bones are crazily stiff, making her gasp in pain when she attempts to move just a little. Michael puts his hands on her shoulders to keep her in position, propped against a small pile of cushions.

“I carried you back, Janet got you undressed.” He explains, straight to the point; “You’ve been out for a few hours. Tahani’s making that soup and Jason grabbed the pen…I’m honestly not sure where he is now.”

Having fun, Eleanor hopes. More than she is right now.

“Janet undressed me? Physically…?”

“No, magic.”

Eleanor is surprised to find she’s disappointed by that.

“You’ve been mumbling in your sleep, by the way. I assume that’s what it was. Otherwise I have to break the news that I am not your mother.” He says with a hint of teasing.

That is possibly more embarrassing than the fainting itself.

“Ugh, okay, fine…I know you’re waiting for me to admit it.” She groans; “You were right. I’m sick. I’ll take a couple days rest or whatever, so long as you don’t all make a fuss about it. Just leave me a drink, a remote for my boxsets and my rotating photo frame of hot mail men, I’m set.”

“It’s not as simple as that anymore.” Michael says, more deadpan than Eleanor has ever seen.

It almost scares her a little.

“Well aren’t you being all Doom n’ Gloom. That was the name of a bar I used to go to. No one ever remembered your name, because the point was to party like it was the last night on Earth and they were gonna die anyway.” She tries to deflect as usual. “C’mon then…Lay it on me, demon doc.”

“We’re still waiting on Janet for a full diagnosis. But we know, at the very least, it’s not some Medium Place bug.” He tells her; “If we’re lucky, you’ve just got the flu. If we’re not…you’ve picked up one of the ‘mystery illnesses’ they…I mean, _we_ , sent out from the Pestilence Department. Most of them went on to mutate beyond what we set them to do, like they evolved into a new kind of demon set on torturing who they infect.”

That sends her into a teeny tiny silent panic. She nods, slowly, trying not to show the despair inside of her as she tries even harder not to think about what disease she could potentially have.

“That…sounds terrifying.” She admits, throat still aching and maybe she shouldn’t be talking as much but she has to let it out somehow; “So I might…vomit a dragon or sneeze an electric eel out, something like that?”

“It would more likely be bat vomit but, yeah, you’ve got the gist of it.” He offers her a glass of pink liquid; “Drink that, it will ease the pain a bit and Janet says you need to stay hydrated. I don’t get why you humans don’t just go back to living in the water, I mean you’re mostly made of it, and mermaids are cool. Biggest mistake in your evolution.”

She hates how heavy the glass feels in her hand and how Michael needs to hold the bottom and tip it for her to drink. It cools its way down her throat and brings a sweet minute of relief to the throbbing all through her body.

“You know if you had just come to one of us earlier and said you were ill; we might have been able to spot this a lot sooner and get you sorted out.” He tells her off in a hushed tone.

Is it because he’s aware of her headache or he’s just being condescending?

“Oh, fork off, man.” Eleanor gripes; “You can guilt trip me later. Don’t you know it’s uncool to kick a girl when she’s down?”

“The reason I’m saying this now is to make it clear how important it is for you to be honest with us and to trust your friends, dummy.” He almost looks ready to chuck the drink over her but rethinks it, placing it back on the side table. “When Janet comes back, you need to tell her exactly how you feel so we can sort this out, got it?”

Eleanor can’t remember ever seeing Michael this wound up before. It’s almost as if she managed to personally offend him somehow by not confessing to how sick she felt. She’s close to snapping back at how not everyone has the luxury of a fake break-down and having your mortal, human friend step in for you where you fail.

Except, she doesn’t. Something in Michael’s eyes, how authoritative they make him appear, gives her pause and she nods in agreement. Got it.

The door opens and Tahani enters, carrying a tray while wearing the most elegant apron Eleanor has ever seen.

“One Auntie Nigella soup and toast! Not the most complex meal, I know, but my good pal Jamie Oliver always said it’s about the presentation! And something else about health, he tended to blather on.” She sets the tray in front of Eleanor.

“Aww, thanks babe, smells delicious.” She says with sincere gratitude, the scent managing to make it through her blocked sinuses.

It’s a massive strain just to lift her arm to take the spoon and sit up enough to be in an eating position. One of the pillows behind her back is folded in on itself and is a little uncomfortable.

Tahani notices, obviously; “Here, darling, let me help-“

She reaches out those perfectly manicured fingers to help plump the pillows and not even Eleanor has to heart to snap at her for fussing.

Instead it’s Janet who pops into the room;

“DON’T TOUCH HER!”

Both Tahani and Eleanor jump out of their skin in fright, Eleanor knocking the tray of soup, Michael acting fast to steady it before it scalds their patient.

Janet clears her throat, realizing that may have been overly dramatic.

“Sorry, it’s just…Tahani, you need to stay away from Eleanor. Quickly, get back. Back!” The not-a-robot herds Tahani back towards the door; “No humans should even be in this room, she’s highly contagious.”

“Oh please, Janet,” Tahani clicks her tongue; “I’m not worried about coming down with the sniffles myself if it means I get to help look after my friend when she needs me.”

Eleanor flashes Tahani a tiny, warm smile. She also hopes that she’s not blushing.

“This isn’t just ‘a case of the sniffles’.” Janet states, as serious as Eleanor has seen her in a while. In fact she’s seemed rather distant since her and Jason broke up, which made sense enough not to question it. Now, whatever she’s discovered has her fired up and it has everyone’s attention; “I’m still not entirely sure type of disease Eleanor has but, from all the signs so far, my theory is…”

She bites her lip and then looks at Michael.

Eleanor catches the two of them sharing a look which she struggles to read. Only that it has Michael looking rather grim.

“What? What do I have?” She asks, gaining the smallest boost from the anxiety alone; “Silence? I have a Silent Flu? Am I gonna lose my voice? Go deaf?”

“Shhh!” Michael reaches to touch her head.

“Should I try not to talk? Will that make it worse?” She lowers her voice a little.

“No, you’re being annoying. Let her talk.”

Eleanor frowns, wishing Janet would hurry up and spell it out instead of holding a dramatic pause.

“It’s definitely a virus engineered from the Bad Place.” Janet finally explains; “If it’s what I think it is then it’s called Sleep Mode.”

Eleanor can’t help but laugh a little. That was the most anticlimactic name reveal she’d ever encountered.

“Sleep Mode? That doesn’t sound so bad. You’ve all been saying I could do with a nap.” She quips. Sure, her streaming binge plan might be out, but at least she can wake up refreshed once it’s over.

She knows it won’t be anything so simple.

“Michael?” Janet looks over to him.

He nods, solemn.

“The reason it’s called that is because of the purpose for its design,” Michael takes over explaining, “See, whenever demons would get tired of torturing someone for days on end, or just wanted to go on their lunch break, obviously it meant leaving the human for a while…torture-less. Management would come down hard on us…them for taking too long breaks and the humans getting too much relief between punishments. So, the DOP – Department of Pestilence – came up with an idea to set humans into a ‘sleep mode’ while they weren’t being used, kinda like a laptop. And by used; I mean horrifically abused and tormented.”

“We got that.” Everyone else nods.

“Right, so whenever they were infected with the virus, it would basically sap all the energy from their body and eventually leave them a motionless husk. They didn’t technically fall asleep though…” Michael winces a little as he tries to go on; “Because their minds were still wide awake and torturing them via their own inner demons and hallucinations. It was almost like they would do the work for us and torture themselves whilst in a coma…forever.”

Eleanor has felt what little color is left in her face drain out with every word Michael has spoken. In all the lives and afterlives and in betweens she’s experienced, she can’t remember ever hearing of something so terrifying.

And it might happen to her. Soon.

“But…you said it was a Sleep Mode. You can wake your phone or laptop up from Sleep Mode easy, surely the same applied to freeing humans from that…ordeal.” Tahani flinches from the doorway, clearly just as scared as Eleanor; “If worst comes to worst, we can just ‘press the standby button’ surely, whatever that is?”

Michael shakes his head; “There are three reasons Sleep Mode was never officially released on the market. One, management thought it would encourage more slacking off, more than our daily Sloth quota. Two, demons eventually got bored of not getting to hear the humans scream or complain as they were in pain. And three…It was never properly finished. The disease worked well enough to render the human an insane vegetable, but it was never discovered how to…’turn them back on’.”

“Forksake!” Even with the filter in place, it is rather startling to hear Tahani curse so angrily. Her hands fly up to cover her mouth.

Eleanor tries her best to put on a smile, despite the fact her fingers are clutching the bedsheets in fear.

“Tahani. Babe, please, do as Janet says. Go find Jason and make sure he knows to stay out of this room.” She tries to order in her best Boss voice, despite being weak and bedridden; “And make sure the humans don't come nowhere near Mindy’s. I can’t risk any of you guys.”

Tahani shakes her head; “Eleanor, I-“

“Just take care of-“

_How dare you ask that of her?! That’s your job and no one elses. Typical Eleanor, shirking her responsibilities!_

That’s not it!

The idea of Chidi finding her in this state and not having a clue about what he means to her only to then catch something so scary…

No. Don’t think about it.

She promised to keep him safe. She promised to take care of him. All of them. Her friends, the living and the dead.

_What the hell were you thinking, Shellstrop? You’re not cut out for this! You’re nothing!_

She clutches at her head, the voice shrieking its way through her brain like razor wire. Her vision blurs distorted as much as her hearing.

There’s no arguing with the voice. There’s no chance for a snappy comeback.

“Eleanor?”

A different voice. This one softer and clearer through the screaming. She grips onto it like a lifeline until the world finally comes back into focus and the awful noise rings out.

When everything clears, Eleanor realizes it’s Michael’s arm she’s been clutching as well as his voice.

She wakes up in a cold sweat, feeling as though someone has been wailing on her with a sandbag while she slept. Could that even count as sleep? It certainly hadn’t felt like rest.

“Where’s Tahani?” She pants, her voice still rasping a little.

“You told her to leave. That was two hours ago. Then there was a lot of thrashing and kicking. Ouch, by the way.” He says, touching her hand on his arm; “Janet’s scanning the neighborhood to try and find the source of where you caught this before it infects someone else.”

That reassures her. Make sure Chidi doesn’t get sick, as well as the others. She tries to rack her brain for the first time she started coughing. Was that the same day she’d caught it? She had felt run down for a couple days before as well. Eleanor groans, rubbing at her head. Why can’t she just think straight?

Michael rubs her shoulder; “They’ve started, haven’t they. The hallucinations? The…”

“Tortures?” She nods, “…I guess so. I don’t even know what they are, it’s all just noise and pain and…” She won’t mention the voice; “…It’s going to get worse, I take it?”

Michael hesitates, probably wishing he could lie to her. He knows it would never get past her bullshit detector.

He nods; “If Janet is right, then, yeah. But you also might be able to fight it, I dunno, I never actually worked with Sleep Mode back when I was a temp. I do know that if anyone is feisty enough to kick a virus’ butt back to Hell, it’s you.”

Somehow Michael’s pep talks always have a way of boosting Eleanor’s spirit, no matter how heavy all the crap feels that’s piled on top of her.

“Did you stay here the whole time I was out of it?” Eleanor asks, almost dubious.

“’Course I did. You can’t be left alone right now and I’m afraid me and Janet are the best aides available, seeing as we’re the only ones immune to what you’ve got. If you’d prefer, I could always call for Derek?”

“No, no, no, no! God, no!” Eleanor cannot stress her negativity on that front enough.

Michael grins. Of course, he was only screwing with her.

“You sure? I hear he already has a nurse’s outfit.”

“Please stop making me even more sick!” She grimaces, despite feeling a tad better for the laughter; “You’ll do. I just don’t want you to get bored stuck in here with me.”

“I spent more than eight hundred times inviting you in to sit in the same room and, even though you kept annoying the crab outta me, I was never bored.” He explains; “It’s not like time really has that much meaning when you’re immortal anyway. Also, Jason came back and gave me his video game thing, so I might have been playing on that while you were fighting the duvet.”

That was fair enough. Michael mentioning the reboots gives her pause for thought. She had all her memories back from those many, many afterlives. But it was always tricky to look back at them and find a specific moment. Like flicking through your old Facebook photos and finding a bunch from a wild night out where you apparently stole a police car and should probably delete that photo because you also can’t remember if you were arrested or not. Not that such a specific example would matter to Eleanor now.

It’s like she knows certain things happened, she knows they are there, but it takes some focusing to really remember them. She may focus way too much on the one where her and Chidi were together. She tries not to think too much about Michael during all those times. He was a different person. Not even a person! All the paternal warmth and consideration back then had always been a mask waiting to fall and reveal a sadistic demon beneath, reveling in her and her friend’s misery, over and over and over.

Now that same demon is here at her bedside. Looking after her. Making her feel safe.

“Janet warmed up that soup if you want it.” Michael tells her, offering the tray again; “Hungry?”

“Fork yes.” She had been too bunged up to even smell Tahani’s soup.

She wonders what the old Michael would think if he saw his future self, taking such tender care of a bedridden cockroach. Then again, her past self from just last night would probably gag at being fed like a child.

Their past selves could suck it.

*

Janet returns barely an hour later.

“How are you feeling now?” She asks Eleanor while Michael takes the empty tray out, along with her message of ‘thanks Hot Stuff’ to Tahani for the soup.

Eleanor knows she can’t lie to the all-knowing not-a-lady; “My legs feel like jelly, every bone in my body weighs a ton and I swear someone stuffed razor blades in my throat and cotton in my skull. So not quite as bad as my college come downs but getting there.”

“I just need to take your temperature.” She puts her hand to Eleanor’s forehead; “By the way, Chidi was asking where you were today.”

That makes her heart throb in her already tight chest.

“W-what did you tell him?” It should be touching that he worries about her, wants her company, even when he barely knows her. But all she feels is anxiety and guilt.

What she wouldn’t give for him to know the truth. What she wouldn’t pay to have him holding her and getting her through this without the risk of him getting sick.

“Just that you would be away on business for a while in the Good Place HQ, trying to arrange for more surprises in the neighborhood. That seemed to be enough for him. Brent also seems to be sure that he will have your job in a year’s time. Then he asked me for a beer and if I could pop it open with my tongue. Murder me, please.” She smiles through gritted teeth.

Eleanor flashes her a sleepy, sympathetic smile. However, she can’t help but be sad that Chidi is so accepting of the lie. There’s a selfish part of her that wants him to worry.

_He said that was your problem, remember? Nothing ever changes._

She shudders a little, frightened that the voice is about to come back along with more sensory abuse.

Then Michael comes back into the room with a fresh glass of water.

“I’m just checking how her fever is doing.” Janet informs, her hand still on Eleanor’s forehead.

“And?” He asks.

Janet moves her hand away and holds it up. Her index and middle finger are dripping like candle wax.

“I’d say it’s running pretty high.” She says in her usual perky, stating the obvious manner. She looks at Eleanor; “Maybe try to sleep.”

“Is that a good idea? Wouldn’t I just be letting myself go into the coma this Sleep Mode thing was designed for?” She asks, feeling tired and groggy but afraid to shut her eyes if it means she is left alone with the Voice.

Michael shakes his head; “Properly resting is not what it was designed for and it’ll help you regain your strength.”

“You said there was no cure for this.” She whispers.

“Not that we know of. But it’s been thousands of Bearimey’s since the disease was invented so we don’t know how it’s mutated or adapted.” Janet explains.

“All we know for sure is that you stressing yourself out is going to make it worse and if there is a chance you can beat it yourself, it’s to rest and stay here where it’s safe for everyone.”

She nods, she gets it. There’s no room for her trying to protect her ego anymore. She’ll agree to be pathetic and dependent so long as it keeps the experiment and the neighborhood protected.

“Put this on her and refresh it every hour or so.” Janet hands Michael a damp cloth; “I’ll be back as soon as I’ve found out more…And as soon as I’m done helping John pick an outfit for going out tonight.”

She pops out of the room.

“Girl knows how to multi-task.” Eleanor quips, sliding down to settle against the pillows.

“Not a girl.” Michael gives the automatic response and carefully places the cloth on her head; “I dunno what we’d do without her. Stealing her was the best evil thing I ever did.”

Eleanor can’t argue with that. It just went to show how something done wrong could be turned around and improved into something wonderful.

The cloth is cool and soothing as Michael presses it to her skin.

“Everything’s okay out there. Isn’t it?” She asks, struggling to keep her eyes open.

“Everything’s fine. Just sleep.”

Eleanor does as she’s told.

*

_Being sick was the most boring thing ever._

_She lay in her bed and could only listen to the clock on her bedside table slowly tick away the minutes and the hours. Being off school was supposed to be every kid’s dream come true. And yet she doesn’t have the energy to sit up, let alone play with her cheap toys or watch T.V. They only had the one set and it was downstairs where she wasn’t allowed._

_Not while she was in quarantine._

_“Mom, can I get a T.V in my room please? Just for today?” she had begged when Donna had last entered her room to give her a glass of Sunny D._

_Her mother had huffed and thrown her hands in the air; “Do I look made of money to you? Ask your damn father, he’s always good at making what cash I earn disappear.”_

_She had slammed the door and Eleanor knew better than to ask again._

_That had been a couple of hours ago and her glass of sugar-pumped orange juice was almost empty. She had already slept for most of the morning and was now simply restless and irritated. She wanted to kick and scream like a toddler but knew it would only earn her a screaming fit in the face. Eleanor wasn’t stupid. She had seen kids at school get ill and then their moms had come to pick them up. She’d watched them wrap them up in hugs and layers and carried them home to be cared for._

_Lucky, ungrateful little turds._

_She’d say out-loud how hugs were lame. How she was way more mature for knowing how to take care of herself. It made her feel bigger than the rest of them. Now she feels tiny and broken like her dolls._

_“You have to watch over her for a few hours!”_

_“What? I got a game to get to!”_

_“Don’t you dare, shitbag, you’re not losing anymore of our money on poker! You’ve never won and you never will because you’re a fucking loser!”_

_“A fucking loser who knocked you up good! Hey oh!”_

_“Who the hell do you think is going to high-five you for that? Just be a parent until I get back, check she’s not choking on her own sick at some point, or that damn child protection officer is gonna be at our door again.”_

_The door slams and Eleanor struggles to sit up so she can glance out the window. She watches her mother strut out to the car, clearly muttering to herself, before speeding off._

_She’s not surprised to hear Dad turning the T.V on downstairs to his football and turning the volume up._

_How the fuck is she supposed to rest with that?!_

_Eleanor holds her pillow over her head. Maybe if she’s lucky, she’ll manage to suffocate herself by accident. Then they’d be sorry, at least after they were arrested for negligence and sent to prison. That would show them!_

_Picturing them both suffering was the only thing that stopped her from sobbing into the mattress._

*

The tears she had held in from her memories have leaked as she slept. She blinks through the moisture in her eyes and takes a moment to look around, piecing together where she is, why she’s there. The answers come back, piece by piece, with each shallow breath. Except for one.

Why is she alone?

“Michael…?” she whispers, confused.

It doesn’t make sense. He’d promised to stay with her.

_It makes perfect sense, you little idiot! You just don’t want to face up to the facts. You know what they are._

Eleanor panics; “MICHAEL!”

She’s ready to try calling for Janet next before the door bursts open. Michael stands in the threshold with a box of tissues in his hand. His jacket is off and his bow-tie undone, hanging loose around his collar. There’s stubble growing on his face beneath a pair of worried eyes.

It’s unclear whether he sleeps but Eleanor can see he looks tired.

“What’s wrong? I just stepped out for a few minutes to get more tissues.” He apologizes, quickly closing the door behind him and moving back to the bed; “You seemed to be resting fine for a few hours but then you started crying and I didn’t know how to get you to stop. For future reference, I’ll take the feverish punching any day over the crying because I’m sure as home not equipped for-“

Eleanor roughly grabs onto him and throws herself into his arms. The sinking fear of abandonment had only been there for a split second, yet it was enough to scare the crap out of her. Add to that, she’d woken up cold and damp, pajamas twisted around her. It’s not until this moment, as she buries her head in Michael’s chest, that she notices how warm he is.

“Oh. Right.” Michael says, clearly taken aback for a moment; “Didn’t think of that.”

He wraps his arms around her and holds her to him, letting her nestle against him, her fingers curling into his shirt. His hand rubs her back and she starts to regain control of her breathing. In, out. In, out.

After a few minutes, Eleanor sniffles; “M’sorry. I’m such a hot mess.”

She feels Michael shake his head, his chin on top of her hair.

“Go ahead and cry all you want,” He whispers, softly; “But you’re going to have to pay for my new shirt.”

That manages to bring a laugh out of her, along with a couple of tears from sheer exhaustion.

Comforted, she slowly moves away, Michael’s hands moving back to hold hers.

“I’m here. I’m not leaving this house until you’re back to your old kickass self.” He assures her, grabbing a tissue to dab the last of the dampness on her face.

She squeezes his hand; “Michael…I’m scared.”

“Eleanor…”

“Where is Janet? What is the plan for if I don’t recover from this? Where can we find a…an antidote or something?” The tears threaten to rise again.

“Just try to relax. Don’t worry about any of that, we’re taking care of it and finding out what we can.” He tells her, calm and steady; “Tahani and Jason have got everything taken care of in the neighborhood, Janet is having to juggle a lot with making sure everywhere is sterilized and seeing if maybe she can create a cure herself. That might take her sneaking into a pocket dimension near the Good Place but their security is appalling so that won’t be too difficult. And if all else fails…We’ll just have to tell the Judge.”

“No! No, Michael, you can’t!” Eleanor starts to freak again.

“Eleanor, we’ve all agreed, none of this is worth you sacrificing yourself!”

“I don’t give a fork what you all think I’m worth! It’s my sanity versus humanities salvation on the line, and I want you to respect my damn wishes! No matter what happens, do not tell the Judge because she will either reset the whole experiment or give up on us completely! Then all of this, everything we’ve been through, will have been for _nothing_!”

Michael frowns; “You know if Chidi were here, he’d agree-“

“Well Chidi isn’t here, is he! I’m alone, as forking usual!”

Michael stares at her, mouth hanging open slightly. It takes a moment for Eleanor to register the hurt in his eyes at the words that tumbled furiously out of her stupid mouth. The guilt hits her like a punch to the gut.

“Oh, shirt…Michael, I…I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to be a bench.” She rubs at her pounding temples; “It’s just my head right now. I can’t think straight!”

_Too late for being sorry. You’ve shown your true Arizona trashy colors._

_He’s going to walk out that door and leave you just like your dear old-_

“I know.”

Eleanor looks up, blinking out the white spots. He’s still here.

Smiling.

“I told you. I’m staying right here. So it’s gonna take more than a Shellstrop Tantrum to scare this old demon off.” He tells her, a twinkle in his eye; “You know what I think you need? A bit of fun.”

Fun? Who was this guy and what did he do with Michael?

She frowns, unsure; “Dunno if you’ve been paying attention, bud, I’m not exactly up for partying right now.”

“Jason’s been throwing me ideas to keep you from getting bored in here. Believe it or not he came up with more than half that didn’t involve arson or pot.”

“Such as?”

*

She taps and holds the left button on the controller; “Ah yeah, gonna overtake you! Ha!”

“What? No fair, you were way behind me!”

“Gotta learn to use that drift, man. Hey Janet. High five Jason for me.” Eleanor requests without looking away from the screen projected on the bedroom wall.

She’s sat against the pillows with Michael beside her, each of them holding a joy-con as they race their characters on the four way split screen that Janet shares between her and the living room where the other two are playing.

“Tahani’s catching up with you too. Woo!” She cheers as weakly as she can, just having enough energy to focus on the game and use her fingers.

“Which one is Tahani?” Michael asks.

“The princess, duh, who else would she be?”

“Well I’ve almost got her beat- HEY!”

Eleanor laughs as Michael’s character gets hit by a flying projectile, his Bowser avatar and cart flying in the air and back to last place.

“She blue shelled you, bud.” Eleanor manages to reach for her own glass with her free hand and takes a sip. It’s like the fun and, albeit limited, interaction with her friends has given her a tiny second wind.

Michael tuts and drops his controller in a show of petulance when the race ends; “Well I just realized what _my_ Bad Place would be like; playing that on a loop and never getting to win. Only a truly evil creature could have designed something so rigged!”

Such a sore loser.

It’s a shame that the tiny spurt of adrenaline lasts for only half an hour before she regrets using her hands so much. She gets Janet to deliver her gratitude to her friends for joining in, even if they had to play from the other room. They wouldn’t have been able to stick around for too long anyway; someone needs to be looking after the neighborhood. Eleanor tries her best not to worry about what might be going wrong out there without her knowing.

Her window only looks out to the side of Mindy’s house and some open fields, barred off from the neighborhood. It doesn’t really do much to reduce the feeling of isolation. But she will take a blank landscape to Mindy continuing her nudist gardening. Or, worse, when she gets Derek to do it for her.

Michael had been a sport. He was doing his best to keep her spirits up and distract her from both her worries outside and the more pressing danger inside her. And honestly, Eleanor admits to herself, she could have much worse company during this ordeal.

She comes very close to taking that thought back the moment Michael starts playing his guitar.

“Dude, please. I thought your torturing days were done!” She complains, laying on her side, not tired enough to sleep but too weak to snatch the instrument away.

“One song, that’s all I’m asking! Consider it your bill for my services these past couple days.”

He strums the guitar which even Eleanor can tell needs more tuning.

_“Nobody knows what it’s like to be the bad man,  
To be the sad man,  
Behind blue eyes.”_

Eleanor grits her teeth at his crooning and continuing to mess up so many notes. She tells herself to grin and bear it. Michael has spent god knows how many hours with her at this point, watching over her, keeping her fed and hydrated, being kicked in the jaw during one of her feverish fits. She owes him a few minutes of indulging his lack of musical talent.

And then it starts to feel more like several hours.

_“But my dreams they aren’t as empty,  
As my conscience seems to be-“_

“FORK! SHIRT!” Eleanor curses, clutching at her skull.

She throws herself back against the pillows and creases her face in agony.

Michael puts down his guitar and slides onto the bed; “Eleanor? Eleanor, what’s wrong? I’m right here, you’re okay! You’re safe!”

He clutches at her hand, worry etched in behind the frames of his glasses.

She makes a groaning sound and then turns her head to face him. A cheeky grin stretches over her face before she starts giggling.

“So that’s how I get you to stop!”

Michael’s eyes widen and he drops her hand; “You little faker!” He struggles not to smile as she keeps laughing. He picks up his guitar; “Right. Because of that, you have to sit through ten more songs.”

“No!”

“And they’re all early two thousand’s, whiny, alternative rock.” He practically sneers.

“Nooo!” She’s still grinning as she complains.

Michael continues to fail with each attempt but doesn’t seem to realize or care despite Eleanor’s cringing and pleas for mercy. The walls must be soundproof because there’s no way Mindy would put up with this amount of noise pollution.

“Ah, I get it! This is the Bad Place! See, I worked it out again! Reset my memory. Snappy snap!” she says after his cover of Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

He shakes his head; “Not this time, sweetheart.”

Eleanor just lays down and accepts her fate.

It might just be some form of Stockholm syndrome settling in, but when Michael gets to his cover of Nickelback’s ‘Photograph’, it doesn’t sound half bad. Or maybe that was because the bar wasn’t too high to begin with. By the time he’s on his last song, she’s half-asleep.

_“I found a reason for me to change who I used to be,_   
_A reason for all that I do,_   
_And the reason is…”_

“Ice cream?” Eleanor mumbles, her throat starting to ache some more. She’ll settle for good old frozen yoghurt if need be.

Once again, the request works to get Michael away from his guitar.

*

It’s another welcome distraction from the idea of falling asleep into the traps of her infected mind. Plus, this Celebrity Liked Your Tweet flavor might be one of her new favorites.

Michael is sat beside her with his own cup, probably more invested in the movie than she is.

“Aww, they make a cute couple.” He comments.

“He’s the villain.”

“What? You said you hadn’t seen this before. No spoilers.”

“It’s not a spoiler! I haven’t seen it; I can just tell! He’s totally the guy at the bar who sees you buying a round of drinks and hits on you, all sweet like, when really he just wants a rich girlfriend to leech off, despite the fact you plan on making yourself vomit so you don’t have to pay for those drinks!” She tries to explain.

“Putting aside your confession of minor theft, I still think you’re wrong.” Michael shakes his head.

Then thirty minutes later, wouldn’t you know, Hans is telling Anna that he doesn’t love her right after leaning in for true love’s kiss and before leaving her to die, cold and alone. Michael throws his empty yoghurt cup in the air.

“WHAT?”

“Told ya.” Eleanor gloats; “Villain.”

“But he didn’t have to be that charming or seem so kind, I mean…There’s a difference between being a villain and a jerk.” Michael complains, not seeing the irony.

Eleanor smiles; “Happens more often than you’d think.”

She gestures for Michael to take her empty cup and pass her the water. Her throat is soothed a little from the frozen yoghurt. It feels like there’s less pressure around her forehead. Hopefully her fever is going down. It feels like Janet hasn’t appeared in a while to check on her. Maybe she’s expecting Michael to call if there is an emergency. Maybe she’s busy seeing to Chidi and the others.

Strangely, none of that concerns her too much at this moment. She finishes her drink and leans against Michael’s shoulder to watch the rest of the film.

“Why did you pick this children’s cartoon again?” He asks.

“When I was at my mom’s, that kid Patricia kept chatting my ear off about a load of crab while I was secretly checking her homework books for heroine Donna might’ve stashed. Anyway, I heard her say something about how she’d been off school sick and that she’d watched this with her dad…Sounded lame.”

It didn’t. The only lame part was that it was yet another glimpse at the childhood she could have had if her mother gave two shits about her and if she’d been with a man who wanted children. A man who was capable of being a good dad.

“So as my self-appointed father figure, you get to join me in this experiment to see what it’s really like.” She explains.

Michael puts his arm around her shoulders.

“And?”

“…Not bad, I guess.”

Eleanor rests her head against Michael's chest, feeling an odd realisation when there's no heartbeat against her ear, instead a soft hum of whatever demons have instead. She gives in to the warm comfort that being looked after brings, instead of beating herself up over being weak and helpless. It’s a new feeling. A scary feeling.

She knows how Chidi’s love feels. She knows the love that’s between her and her friends.

But this…whatever it is between her and Michael. It’s something that has existed for so long and yet is only recently feeling clear to her. Like seeing something in the corner of her eye for a long while before properly turning her head. It’s something unique to them. That is, unless, it’s all in her shattered mind.

“We haven’t spent this much time together, just the two of us, since that day in the first attempt.” She realizes, aloud, having to look back in all those hundreds of years of rebooted memories like a flip book; “When I tried teaching you how to have fun like a human. Do you remember that?”

“Sure, I do. Janet has my bowling ball in her void somewhere, I think.” He replies, “And my singing’s improved since then, you gotta admit.”

Does she have to? Eleanor just wrinkles her nose.

She's very close to falling asleep again. It would be so easy and peaceful to sleep in Michael's arms, if only she could have the faith she wished she had that he would still be there when she woke up.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, softly.

“It’s just,” She shuffles a little to sit up; “I was thinking about all those reboots and how there were these constants and variables. Constants being things like you welcoming me in, Chidi helping me, me wanting to kill Tahani before becoming her best friend, Jason breaking his silence to me, you failing miserably when we figured it out, again and again and again-“

“Get to the point or I’m grabbing my guitar.”

“And then there’d be all the variables you’d throw in like where we lived and who our soul mates were.” She explains; “I only just realized that for all the things that kept repeating themselves, even without you planning them; like me and Chidi, Janet and Jason, escaping to Mindy’s…In eight hundred plus reboots; you and I never had another day together like we did that time in the arcade. Did we?”

Michael’s expression is unreadable as he avoids looking at her. Yet it’s clear he’s no longer focused on the movie.

“No. We didn’t.”

Eleanor sighs; “Well…I can at least say one of us had fun that day.”

“I had fun!” He responds, defensive.

“Yeah but it didn’t mean the same, did it. At that point, to you, we were nothing but ants running around while you chased us with your magnifying glass. It was a game to mess with me, to make me think we were friends, just so you could screw with my head later. It wasn’t real to you.” Eleanor says; “And dude, seriously, I’m fine with that! I know you’re all reformed now and that nothing that happened between us in those other reboots are important because you were a different demon than the Michael I know now. Don’t worry about it.”

Michael looks rather lost for words.

“No wonder you didn’t try to be friends with me after that, it must have been a pain in the ash trying to pretend you cared the first time around. I know, I’ve been there.”

She’s done more than her fair share of fake friendships in order to gain access to some rich bitch’s jacuzzi or steal her boyfriend or girlfriend or both. Michael isn’t the only one who used to be a heartless monster. Maybe that’s why they get on so well.

Before the movie ends, just when Anna’s heart is completely frozen, Michael grabs the empty yoghurt cups and gets out of bed.

“I just need to run to the office to grab something. You’ll be okay for a few minutes, right?”

Eleanor frowns, taken aback; “Uhm, sure, I-“

“Great, if you start to feel feverish, call Janet.”

“But…”

He’s already out the door. Eleanor is alone again.

It feels like it’s been ages since Michael left her side. The movie pauses itself when he leaves the room, on the image of Elsa clinging to her sister’s icy corpse.

The cold seems to seep from the tv screen into her room in the form of a grey mist. She’s pretty sure the heavenly flatscreen is not supposed to have that feature installed. She grabs at the duvet and wraps it around herself as the chill begins to grasp at her bones.

_“So long Michael. Nice knowing ya.”_

Eleanor shakes her head. No, no, no. It had been hours now. She was almost sure the voice was gone. She was almost certain that she was beating this.

“He’ll come back.” She tells herself, defying the voice; “You can fork off, you creepy, whispering fart-.”

There’s a crackling sound slicing its way through the air as the temperature plummets. Eleanor watches in horror as the room appears to freeze over under a growling sheet of ice that creeps its way over the walls and the floor and the ceiling. It bars the door with thick stalagmites and bursts the light on her ceiling, making Eleanor jump as the room goes dark.

A howling gale raps against the walls of the house.

_Oh, Eleanor. If only there was someone out there who loved you._

The glass in the window cracks and then shatters, sending a blizzard screeching in from the wilderness outside. The harsh wind slices at Eleanor’s face as she screams.

It’s not real! It’s not real!

“JANET!”

“Hey.”

Eleanor opens her eyes to find the room back to normal and the temperature steady again. She looks around, gasping, making sure the window remains solid and the door accessible. The tv is off but that’s the least of her concerns.

She turns to see Janet standing at her bedside, immaculate as ever, hands behind her back.

“Where’s Michael?” she needs to know.

God, how pathetic is she.

All she knows for certain anymore is that, so long as Michael was close to her, the voice bothered her less until she nearly forgot it was there at all. Then the second Michael left her, it returned along with another nightmarish vision. Something about Michael, she’s not sure what, helps her to fight off this infection. She doesn’t need the hows or whys. She just wants him.

“He was on his way back from his office when I alerted him of an unexpected arrival at the train station so he went there with Tahani and Jason to see who it was.” Janet explains.

“Who was it?” Eleanor frowns, anxiety now building too. Great.

“Unclear. You summoned me before I could see.” Janet smiles, along with a hint of irritation at Eleanor’s bad timing; “Are you okay?”

Eleanor shakes her head; “I thought I was getting better but…I had another ‘turn’. It came and went so quick but it felt so real…”

Janet sits on the bed and reaches out to touch her hand.

“Eleanor. There is something I need to tell you. It’s both good news and bad news.” She informs her.

It can never just be good news, can it?

“Well gimmie the good news first. Otherwise you say the bad thing first, the good stuff doesn’t sound so good. Like eating clam chowder then downing a margherita, you just tainted a good drink before you got to enjoy it. So shoot.” She brushes the hair from her own forehead.

Janet nods.

“Good news is I’ve scanned the entire neighborhood over a trillion times. There is no trace of a virus in the air or on any surfaces. Not even in the outskirts or anywhere at Mindy’s.” She tells Eleanor; “So Chidi and the other humans are perfectly safe.”

“Oh, thank God.” Eleanor sighs with relief. It’s tough to imagine how she can have anything bring her down after that.

“The bad news is…this means that the only way you could have been infected is by direct insertion. Meaning something or someone intentionally made you sick.” Janet looks grim; “And also, given how minor the virus is and how you keep fighting it back only for it to escalate again…that progress could only come by a continuous exposure to Sleep Mode.”

Continuous?

Eleanor blinks, standing corrected. It turned out to be very easy to kill her joy again.

“Someone’s…poisoning me?” She frowns, her skin crawling; “But when? I get how I might have been infected before, maybe when that sexy shirtless not-soulmate of mine was here, but for it to still be happening…It doesn’t make sense!”

“I know.” Janet nods.

“I mean I’ve been in this room for days and the only one who’s been near me is…”

Her words lose her as she glances over to the guitar abandoned on the chair. Eleanor feels the air leave her lungs as she grasps at Janet’s hand. She had joked about it being torture.

It couldn’t be…

“Michael.”


	2. Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eleanor's trust in Michael continues to break apart after a surprise visit from another runaway Bad Place employee.

Eleanor feels awful for even thinking about it. But there was no denying the facts. The only person with an opportunity to keep infecting her with this virus was the demon who had been at her bedside for the past couple of days. The demon she considered one of her closest friends.

“You don’t think Michael would do this, do you?” Janet asks.

And as soon as she says it aloud, Eleanor realizes how ridiculous it is.

“Of course not! This has gotta be some way the Bad Place is trying to fork with us.” She figures out the obvious; “Maybe they…have some sort of invisibility cloak and you haven’t been able to detect them here.”

“Impossible, no one is able to escape my radar.”

“Okay, no matter how perky you are, that sounded terrifying.” Eleanor points out; “Maybe they infected the water? Or the ingredients Tahani put in her soup? They might not be infected now but you could have missed them earlier, right?”

Janet nods to that. She would have been too busy seeing to the needs of the group and unaware there was any need for a contamination scan.

“I just…won’t eat or drink anything for a while. It’s not like I need it, right?” Eleanor reasons.

“You wouldn’t ‘die’ of starvation. But eating and drinking does help sustain you mentally and spiritually, especially fighting off a virus. Fasting could put you at serious risk. It’s why when they used Sleep Mode in the Bad Place it would take effect so quickly and be so severe – they don’t feed humans anything there aside from scraps of deep-fried cow faeces.”

Eleanor cringes. There’s no way she can win. She’s damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t. Only instead of being damned to the Bad Place, it’s being damned to her own twisted subconscious.

“You can scan everything I’m about to eat or drink though, right?” She asks.

“I do and have. Right before I handed them to Michael.”

That doesn’t sound good for her demon bud at all. Eleanor refuses to consider that he would be capable of that. Not after everything they had been through, everything Michael had risked for them, sacrificed for them. There had to be a piece missing from this puzzle.

She hears the front door open and a bustle of noise out back.

“They’re back…with someone new.” Janet tells her, thankfully not disappearing on her.

The door opens and Michael frog marches another person into the bedroom while Jason and Tahani stand back behind the open threshold.

Eleanor frowns as she tries to place the name of the familiar face.

“Glenn? From the Bad Place?” It wasn’t someone she expected.

“Hi again. You look like death!” Glenn tells her, cheerily; “Uhm…that is a compliment where I’m from, of course.”

Eleanor is still lost; “What’re you doing here?”

Surely the Bad Place is a little smart enough not to send their most bumbling team player in to try and sabotage their experiment. Presuming that is what he’s here to do. Add fuel to the fire in Eleanor’s forehead.

“He said he needed to talk to you.” Michael explains, still holding Glenn’s arm in a restraint in case he tries something; “Go on, now’s your chance.”

“Actually…I need to talk to Eleanor in private.”

“Yeah, that ain’t happening,” Eleanor scoffs. She’s clever enough to realize that even a doughy guy like Glenn could do what he wanted with her while she was in her current state, weak as a kitten.

“If I tell you what I need to tell you, it will create a very uncomfortable social situation.”

“Whatever you can say to me, you can say in front of my friends.” Eleanor folds her arms, defiant; “Tell me or I get them to put you straight back on the train you rode in on.”

Michael looks all too ready to do just that.

Glenn takes a breath; “Alrighty.” He points to the one demon-handling him: “That’s not Michael. That’s Vicky in a Michael suit.”

Eleanor feels gravity distort around her. In a heartbeat, nothing feels real.

Had Janet not recently revealed how Michael was the most likely suspect for keeping her infected with this crazy virus, she probably would have laughed this off as a pathetic attempt by the Bad Place to try to get her to lose faith in him. There would have been no reason for her to distrust Michael before.

Now the timing felt too chilling to be a mere coincidence.

“Oh, come now, you don’t honestly expect us to fall for that!” Tahani clearly doesn’t waver as she listens in with Jason from the door.

“Look, I can only tell you what I know, which is that Shawn had me build a Michael suit for Vicky to wear when you guys would be sent to the Bad Place and it would be used to torture you.” Glen tries to explain; “Then Vicky suggested using it to sabotage your guy’s experiment by swapping the real Michael out with the fake Michael after they came to collect Chris after his screw up at being Linda.”

“Or is that just what you want us to think?!” Jason challenges.

Glenn blinks, uncertain; “Yes?”

Eleanor curses under her breath. _Son of a bitch._ She’d been sure that whole thing with Chris had seemed like a shabby attempt on the Bad Place’s behalf. That there must have been more to it. She had tried to tell Michael, only to be dismissed.

“You overheard some plan, that’s hardly evidence!” Tahani points out.

Eleanor wishes she had the strength to stick up for Michael as her slightly sexier friend could. Tahani also had less reason to lose faith than she did.

“That’s true, I never saw it happen, but I did see Shawn and the others having a toast to some ‘plan’ having worked ‘perfectly’. Why would they be celebrating if they had just been foiled again?”

Eleanor watches Michael as Glenn spins his tale. He looks startled and confused at the accusations. One of the few, rare times that the architect is lost for words.

“Why would you tell us this?” She asks Glenn. It would only make sense that the Bad Place would send someone to reveal all of this to throw a spanner in their works. To play them off against each other.

But Glenn just doesn’t seem the sort they would pick for such a mission. Even in all the reboots of the old neighborhood, Eleanor remembers him seeming the most meek and harmless. The office sap who lived to get kicked around and teased by his peers.

“Because, frankly, Shawn is a bully! They all are.” Glenn admits, as if he’s been wanting to say it aloud for centuries; “I only enjoyed torturing humans for so long because I was told they deserved it, that we what we were doing was justice. But there was always something about it that never seemed right. I wanted to see if your guys experiment could work and change things for the better. And then after I finished building the Michael suit and I overheard Shawn and Vicky gloating to Michael on the phone how they were going to use it to torture all of you-.”

“Ah, ha!” Eleanor feels relieved, almost buzzed, to have caught him out; “Now I know you’re lying! Michael would have told us if he’d had any such call!”

“That’s right, I would!” Michael declares.

Glenn shrugs; “Just get Janet to pull up the phone records to check.”

“Okay, fine, I did get the call.”

Another foundation dissolves beneath Eleanor. She stares, hurt, at Michael as he’s caught in his lie.

“It’s true?”

“Yes! I did get a call from Shawn. It was right before the start of the experiment. It freaked me out so much that I just crumbled. I couldn’t bear the thought of letting you all down and then having you believe I was the one hurting you!” Michael tries to defend himself.

Eleanor pinches the bridge of her nose; “Hang on. You told me a month ago that breakdown was just an act to get me to step up and be a leader?”

“That may have been another lie,” Michael admits, bashful; “But it was only to cover up my earlier lie!”

“Why lie in the first place? Why not just tell us?” Tahani asks, the hurt now evident in her voice.

Not even she can deny how seedy this looks for Michael now.

“Shawn said that he would erase your memories if you knew the Michael suit wasn’t really me so it didn’t seem to matter.” Michael kneels beside the bed and tries to reach for Eleanor’s hand; “Eleanor, please. Look at me. Don’t tell me you believe any of this nonsense.”

He must be able to read the uncertainty in her face. Something is wrong, there’s no arguing that. Someone has been sabotaging the experiment, someone poisoned her, someone is a liar. All the signs point to the one she has been relying on more than ever, even before she fell sick.

But when Eleanor looks at Michael’s hand on hers, she wishes with everything in her for it not to be true.

“I wanna trust you, dude, really I do.” She whispers, her heart feeling torn in opposite directions, ready to rip at the seam. She moves her hand back; “But…”

The one ‘but’ is enough for Michael to make that face as if Eleanor had just knocked him in the gut.

“Oh dear. I told you this would make an awkward situation. Could I have a drink for my dry throat? Got any pig urine?” Glenn asks.

“Quiet, you.” Tahani tells him, still not risking setting foot over the room; “I still think we have no good reason to believe you! I mean, if this is the case, it means our Michael is trapped in the Bad Place! Did you see him there?”

That is a good point. It’s also one which chills Eleanor to the bone. If the being kneeling beside her is a fake, then her Michael is enduring probably some horrific punishment in the Bad Place.

“No, I didn’t,” Glenn admits; “And I’ll be honest, I can’t be completely sure if Shawn was celebrating sending in Vicky in a Michael suit. All I’m certain of is that he knew someone was here to make sure the experiment was a bust. The only other possibility I suspected…was that he managed to persuade Michael to fall back to the side of evil.”

If there was one last pillar of hope holding her up, it was now falling to dust.

It seemed preposterous to believe. Michael would never betray them, not after everything they had endured as a group, a family. They had been through this before, she remembered. Michael had been forced to pretend he had betrayed them only for it to be a ploy and a means to save them. He had risked so much, put his existence on the line, altered fate itself just to help get them into the Good Place.

Eleanor shakes her head; “No. You’re wrong.”

She hears Michael sigh with relief.

“I agree! Michael is our friend and he’s never given us any reason to lose our trust in him!” Tahani says, proudly, to which Jason nods.

Glenn laughs a little; “You’re all serious? No reason? What about the three hundred years he spent torturing you all? Like, I don’t know how much you all remember, but I was there. Every reboot, this guy wanted nothing more than for you to all be in pain. He would brief us all on the best tactics to torment you and would reward us every time we managed to make you miserable. And he pretended to be your friend over eight hundred times and it was always just for show! Just like it probably is now!”

“We do remember.” Eleanor states.

“I don’t?” Jason frowns.

“Most of us remember,” she corrects; “And we don’t care. Michael’s changed since then. He’s not that same demon, he’s not like the rest of you.”

“You’re right about that. Michael was never just another demon.” Glenn holds his hands up; “He was the Worst. I mean, for most of us, torturing humans is just a day job. It’s something we’re expected to do and just get on with it. Or for those like Shawn or Vicky it’s a fun career. But then there’s those of us who revel in it, jerk off to it…That was Michael to a T.”

“Shut up, Glenn.” Now Michael is starting to get vexed. Eleanor can see that their new turncoat is getting under his skin.

“He has always been obsessed with finding the best ways to torture humans!” Glenn carries on, focusing his attention on Eleanor; “I mean, you wouldn’t have caught Sleep Mode if not for him, Eleanor.”

“I SAID SHUT UP!” Michael starts, angrier than he’s ever shown himself to be, rising and closing in on Glenn before he can say anymore.

But the damage has already been done.

“What is he talking about?” Eleanor is almost afraid to learn.

She clutches at her chest that feels tight and hot. All this shouting and anxiety is not helping her at all. But she can’t just hide under the covers and wait for it to go away. Can’t pretend it’s not real.

She watches as Michael seems to silently plea for Glenn not to go on.

“What the fork does he mean?!” She demands to know.

“Michael is the one who invented Sleep Mode.”

Tahani’s jaw drops and silence falls.

Eleanor pulls her hands close and shuffles as far as she can to the other side of the bed. She looks away from Michael, needing a second or a century to process this.

She tries to stay deadly still as the Voice makes a brain-splitting return, shooting through her skull.

_Did you honestly think you were worth changing for to him? You weren't even worth that to your own mother._

It's true and it cuts her deep, her jaw clenched tight.

Janet is the one who finally speaks first; “Is this true, Michael?”

“You don’t know?” Eleanor asks her. She’s supposed to know everything.

“Good Place Janets don’t have access to confidential information in the Bad Place.” She informs them, “It’s why it’s been so difficult for me to find all the important data on this virus and how to create a cure.”

Michael is looking down at his shoes.

“You looked me in the eye and told me that you had never worked with this virus when you worked in that…Sickness Office or whatever.” Eleanor accuses him, hurt stinging her voice.

“Department of Pestilence.” He corrects, quietly; “And that wasn’t a complete lie. I wasn’t involved in constructing the virus, I left that up to the nerds and their test tubes. I don’t know the technical aspects of how it works.”

“You invented it.” Eleanor repeats Glenn’s reveal.

Michael takes a breath and nods; “Yes. It’s true. It was my idea. I proposed creating a way to have humans torture themselves, psychologically, when there were no demons available for direct, physical torture. And I may have been involved in the testing process and helping to suggest ways in which to turn a human’s greatest fears and insecurities in on themselves as punishment. Sleep Mode turned out to be a technical failure in the end but, lucky for me, my boss was so impressed with my initiative and new ideas that it’s how I got my first promotion.”

“Well done, dawg!” Jason cheers from the doorway and Tahani pulls his hand down.

Eleanor just sighs, sad and disappointed, rubbing at her head some more.

“It really was a lifelong passion for you, wasn’t it? Humans suffering mentally?” She whispers, still not able to look at Michael.

“Yes, it was. For the old me. I couldn’t tell you that I was the one who created what’s infected you. I was too ashamed.”

“That’s some pretty vital information you held out, bud!” Eleanor can’t help but snap.

She hasn’t felt this angry in months. It doesn’t help with how frustrated she is at being a victim of this stupid demonic flu that seems to be causing fissures in every reality she wakes to.

“I know and I’m sorry! But Eleanor,” Michael’s voice cracks as he reaches out for her again; “You know me! You know I would never, _ever_ hurt you! Not after all we’ve been through.”

This time Eleanor reels further back.

“Janet says that someone has been continuing to infect me with the virus since you all put me in quarantine. And right now, as much as I hate for it to be the case, you’re our prime suspect. No one else has been as close to me as you these past couple days.”

“Eleanor.” He looks crushed. Heartbroken.

Then again, he always was a fantastic liar.

A thought pops into her head.

“You wanna prove you’re not Vicky? Take off your skin suit.” She challenges him.

“What?”

“What a brilliant idea!” Tahani congratulates; “We can at least rule out the possibility that you’re Vicky in disguise if you take off the suit and show us you’re a normal demon and not a demon inside a terrible actress!”

Glenn starts laughing a little. Michael is not so amused.

“I can’t! I’m sorry, I can’t.” He says.

“How convenient.” Eleanor feels her stomach begin to weigh itself down with the disappointment.

“Look, my real form? I’m a fire squid!” He admits, frustrated; “A six-thousand-foot-tall fire squid!”

Both Tahani and Eleanor look disturbed as they try to picture such a thing. Jason, meanwhile, looks like a little boy at Christmas and pleads with Michael to show it to them.

“No, Jason, it’s not dope! I can’t take off my suit because, if I do, I will smash through the roof of this house and all the humans will see me!” Michael tries to explain; “There are teeth! And tentacles! And I’m constantly on fire! And there’s this juice, ugh, there’s so much juice, Eleanor. Do you really want me to see that? Could you ever be friends with something like that?!”

“YES!” Jason cheers and Tahani tries to hold him back.

Had it been any other circumstance, in any other context, Eleanor would have made some reassuring quip about how she would always be Michael’s friend, tentacles and all. But even that might be stretching things for her to ever unsee some great fiery Cthulu in the place of the not-a-person she thought she knew. She didn’t need to add further disturbing fuel to her hallucinations.

Eleanor gets it, if that is the truth. Or is it another lie as a way for Michael, or Vicky, to get out of taking the suit off? Why are there no easy answers to this dilemma? If she had a stomachache instead of a headache, she imagines this is what it’s like to be Chidi on a daily basis.

“Janet.” Eleanor looks to her; “Surely there’s some way you can prove if this is Michael or not. Don’t you have some sort of lie detector?”

“I might be able to whip up something. Gimmie a few minutes.” She pops out of the room.

Eleanor feels a little more vulnerable now. The only people remaining in the room with her are two demons, neither of which she fully trusts at this moment. Her human friends are left standing in the doorway where they’re unable to do what little they can to protect her.

“Until Janet gets back, I need the both of you to stay away from me.” She orders; “Separate rooms but do not leave Mindy’s place until we figure this out.”

“Am I still all right to ask for some refreshment? I take it it’s a no on the pig urine. Maybe some baby’s tears?” Glenn asks.

Jason reaches in to grab him and drag him out of the room. He mutters something about not believing Glenn because a devil should be wearing Prada. Eventually she hears Jason throw him in a room and slam the door, followed by a horrified scream from Glenn as he no doubt discovers some of Mindy’s sex toys.

Michael has yet to move, his eyes still on Eleanor who is holding back tears at this point. She just feels so tired. Tired of the lies. Tired of all the games. Little things that she may have been strong enough to laugh away before are now clawing deep into her soul.

“It’s not safe for you to be alone right now.” Michael whispers.

She sniffs, trying hard to hold it together.

“I don’t know who you are, man. Maybe I never did.” Eleanor wipes her eyes; “Leave.”

“Eleanor…”

“Get. The Fork. Out.” She tries again, scathingly.

Tahani clears her throat; “Michael. Do as she says.”

It’s clear that she doesn’t want to have to drag Michael out the same way Glenn had to leave. Instead she reaches her hand out and, reluctantly, Michael takes it, letting Tahani lead him away. Eleanor turns and collapses back into the pillows, closing her eyes until she hears the door close. This time she’s alone by choice.

Because the alternative is putting herself and everything she’s working for at risk. It’s worth stumbling through the darkness alone for a short while. Chidi is worth it. Michael, if he’s really here as their friend or if he’s trapped in the Bad Place in need of rescuing, is worth it. And if it’s the case that her worst fear is confirmed that Michael has betrayed them and gone back to the dark side, then it’s something she will just have to get over. Grieve for someone she loved who never truly existed.

She curls herself into the blankets and tries to get some sleep, her body feeling drained from the drama alone. Is it still possible for her to fight this off through sheer Shellstrop will alone? Or has she been infected with too much for her mind to handle? There’s no one here to answer her questions. There’s no one to tuck her in, to stroke her forehead and tell her it will all be okay.

Nothing ever changes.

*

_Eleanor is clutching her ragged stuffed bunny as she curls beneath the bedsheets. She’s been coughing horribly for ten minutes now. She reaches for her plastic cup only to find it’s now empty._

_“Dad!” She calls, her throat suffering for it immediately._

_She doesn’t expect him to get his ass off the sofa and come upstairs. She had been hoping for the water to last until Mom got home, at the least._

_Much to her surprise, the bedroom door opens._

_“Hey! There’s my little angel!” He stumbles in, stinking of beer._

_He sits down on the bed and ruffles her hair._

_“How you feeling, kiddo? Mommy said you weren’t feeling too great.”_

_She gives him a glare filled with more resentment than a six-year-old should know how to feel for their caregiver._

_“I have the mumps!”_

_“Ew, is that it? I thought you were just getting chubby again.” He reels back slightly._

_No, she caught the mumps because her parents believed that vaccines were a scam to put a tracking chip from the FBI in their child._

_She shakes her head; “Could you just…please get me some water?”_

_Dad gets up, probably more worried now about catching what his daughter has than her welfare._

_“Yeah, sure, honey…” He glances around her room; “And how about, in return, you help Daddy out a bit, hmm? Mind if I borrow some cash from your piggy bank?”_

_He doesn’t wait for her to answer before he moves over and picks it up from the shelf._

_“No, that’s mine!” Eleanor protests, struggling to sit up with her swollen glands._

_Doug holds his hands up; “I promise, sweetie, I’ll pay you back! Anyway, it’s technically not yours to begin with, was it?”_

_“Mommy gave it to me from her bingo winnings!”_

_“Exactly and what’s mine is hers, that’s how marriage works! It’s how we got you! One day I’ll explain it all to you.”_

_Eleanor barely has the strength to sob as she watches her own father smash open her piggy bank, despite the fact there was a plug on its belly, and scramble to collect the handful of dollars and coins she’s saved up from birthdays and what little pocket money she gets thrown at her, despite being the one who works the hardest to stop this house from burning to the ground._

_Doug at least cleans up the shards and throws them in the bin before pocketing his little girl’s money._

_“I needed change for the bus to get down town. Daddy’s gonna win big, I promise. Then I’ll buy you a pony.” He says, tapping her on the nose._

_“I just want some water!”_

_“Sorry, sweetie, I gotta run to catch the 22. Just sleep it off until Mommy gets back, yeah? Love ya.”_

_He staggers, drunk, out the bedroom and Eleanor wants nothing more than to scream the entire street down. She throws her stuffed rabbit at the door and then immediately regrets it. It’s too painful for her to get up and collect him from the floor and now she has nothing to comfort her._

_Instead, all she can do is cry alone._

_*_

“OH MY GOSH, HE BLEW UP!”

“OR IS THAT WHAT HE WANTS US TO THINK?!”

Eleanor opens her eyes to the sound of Tahani and Jason screaming from the other room. At first she’s disoriented, as usual, before being grateful to whatever pulled her out from reliving her depressing childhood so vividly. It’s followed up with fear for whatever is now occurring.

She wipes the tears from her face.

“What’s happening?” She asks, voice grating; “Janet?”

“Hi there.”

Janet pops into the room, holding a strange metal cylinder in her hand that seems to be smoking a little, like a recently fired pistol. There’s blue goo all over her outfit and in her hair.

“What the fork happened?! What are you covered in?” Eleanor asks.

“It’s Glenn.” She explains, leading to further disturbing questions; “I thought I had constructed a lie detector to see who was telling the truth. I tested it on Glenn and he sorta…exploded.”

Eleanor’s eyes widen; “You killed Glenn?!”

“A little. I mean, he’ll eventually reform himself over a few months, but it’s the closest I’ve ever come to murder. I think I’m in shock.” Her upbeat smile twitches a little, her hands shaking.

Eleanor should hope so. Glenn was a dweeb as well as a demon, but she didn’t think he deserved that. It was also disturbing to think that the goo dripping from Janet’s chin was alive.

It must be shaking her to the core, being a Good Janet designed to help people only to blow someone up. She had seen Janet kicking ass and taking names before but turning someone into goo when they may not have even had bad intentions was crossing a whole other line.

“You didn’t mean to. But we can’t use that on Michael, obviously.” Eleanor states, pointing to the device which she really wishes Janet would stop pointing in her direction; “I don’t care what lies he’s been telling, if there is a chance that it is really Michael and he’s still our friend, we’re not testing that on him if it means he might get hurt!”

“Agreed. Just thought I’d get your confirmation.” Janet nods, putting the device beside Eleanor’s bed.

The door opens and Tahani stands there, also caked in Essence of Glenn.

“Look at me! Blue demon slime does not go with this dress!” She complains.

Eleanor tries to give her a smile; “Only you could pull it off, babe. Where’s Michael?”

“He’s outside on Mindy’s porch with Jason.” Tahani continues to pick the blobs of demon from her hair; “What do we do now, Eleanor? How are we supposed to know if that’s the real Michael or if he really has been poisoning you?”

She wishes she had an answer for the British beauty queen. There only seems to be one last option left for them and it crushes her to have to admit defeat.

“We can’t know.” Eleanor sighs; “We can’t have Janet try to create another lie detector if there’s a chance it will hurt the real Michael. We can’t just go on as normal or I’ll be stuck inside my own head with all my forked-up baggage forever. And, either way, I don’t think I can trust Michael.” She looks at Janet and then Tahani; “We need to call the Judge and ask her to reset. Hopefully she’ll agree. If not, then we’re all doomed to the Bad Place anyway.”

“I wish you hadn’t felt the need to point out that last bit.” Tahani cringes; “At this point, Eleanor, all I want is to see you up and well again. Sickly Victorian Wench is not your style, my love.”

Eleanor nods in agreement. After all of this, she wants nothing more than to be well again. Surely the Judge, given her omnipotence, can heal her up with a snap of her fingers and sort out this whole mess between Michael and the Bad Place crew. It hurts to think of all the work they’ve done with Simone, John and even Brent being undone.

But there is no other choice. At least they will still have Chidi.

“Go tell Jason and Michael what I’ve decided. Then Janet can send a message to the Judge.” Eleanor says, hoping it’s the right call.

Tahani nods and turns to move away. With the door ajar, Eleanor sees her start towards the front exit before doubling back as she seems to reconsider, moving to fetch something from the other side of the room.

She then re-enters with an object wrapped in a plastic bag.

“Oh, I almost forgot. When we ran into Michael on the way to check out who was at the train station, he was carrying this. He said he’d gone to give it to you as a present.” Tahani explains, offering to throw it onto her bed; “Sadly, it feels too soft and light to be jewelry.”

“Just toss it here, thanks babe.” Eleanor beckons it.

Janet is at her side. If there’s a chance the ‘present’ is boobytrapped or contaminated, then surely, she will be able to detect it.

Tahani makes sure it lands on the bedspread before closing the door.

Eleanor looks at Janet who seems to have read her mind; “I don’t detect anything harmful.”

She reaches to pull it closer and remove the plastic. A small stuffed Minion toy falls into her hands, its single eye gazing dopily up at her. Eleanor holds it before her, staring as the memories come flooding back to her. Memories she already had, much like those vague old Facebook photos, only now restored with meaning again. Her heart beats a little faster as she reaches to stroke the plush fabric.

Janet frowns and leans over to get a closer look.

“I don’t understand. What is it?”

Eleanor smiles, “Ugly yellow toddler.”

This had been in Michael’s possession for the past three hundred years? A tacky prize won with tickets Eleanor had helped him to steal. Except nothing on that ‘date’ of theirs had been real, not for him. Hadn’t it just been a game? A set up for more of Eleanor’s torture? If that was the case, then why had he kept this? What purpose did it serve?

Unless…

Maybe he’d wanted to give this to her to show it had meant something to him. What, exactly? Did it even need explaining or was she just too blind and paranoid to work it out?

“I’m such an idiot. I need to talk to Michael. Now.” She realizes, gripping the minion tight in her hands; “Janet, can you-.”

She’s unable to finish her request once Janet has stabbed her in the neck with a hypodermic needle.

Eleanor’s scream is cut off before it can even begin. She can only utter the smallest of gasps as she looks up into Janet’s eyes to see, all too late, that it isn’t the Janet she knows at her side. Bad Janet lets her true, trampy form take over. Those kind and helpful eyes turn cold and bitter as she smirks, triumphant, at Eleanor’s helpless expression. Bad Janet pushes her thumb on the needle, giving Eleanor an even more powerful shot of whatever is inside. Eleanor fears that she already knows what it is.

Within seconds, a wave of unbearable heat washes through her body until she’s convinced she’s being boiled alive from the inside.

A tear falls from her eye as she tells herself what a stupid mistake she’s made.

“The only thing you need, you little skank, is to go where you should have ended up the first time your skinny butt was splattered over the road.” Bad Janet grins, savagely, as Eleanor tumbles backwards into the dark.

*

“How about I ask Janet to take us to some sorta canyon? And then there’ll be loads of space and I’ll be able to stand on a super high cliff so I can see-.”

“For the last time, Jason, I’m not taking the suit off.”

Michael leans against the bannister, feeling utterly dejected. Jason was supposed to be acting as his guard in case he tried to leave which had to be the most asinine plan anyone had come up with in all twelve billion dimensions. It was a good thing that Michael had no intention of leaving. Where would he even go? Well, to be fair, Alpha Centuri was supposed to be a nice getaway. But that wasn’t the point.

He was waiting for Eleanor’s verdict. How ironic. At one point – scratch that, several points, among those reboots – Michael had acted as Eleanor’s judge, jury and potential executioner when pretending to decide if she was a good person after discovering the truth of her identity. Karma was an asshole.

How could Eleanor not trust him? Just because he’d lied several times on top of the three hundred years of torture? Okay, maybe it was pretty easy.

_I wouldn’t trust me if I were you. Crazy thing to do._

He’d grown so much since then, though. Hadn’t he? He’d taken Chidi’s stupid classes, he’d bent the rules of time and space to save his friends, and he’d tried to be the best confidante for Eleanor during all of this from needing her to take over to losing the Chidi she knew and now enduring the virus he created. He’d thought he was being a good…friend. Or whatever it was Eleanor needed. Just so long as he could help make up for the mess he’d helped create. Were a few lies enough to do undo all that effort trying to do good?

It all felt so…unfair. He wanted to be angry. Anger used to come so naturally. He’d been born with fire in his veins, which wasn’t even merely an expression but a literal fact. It was nostalgic to feel those smidgens of darkness rise up. Anger, deception, greed. They all were so much easier to flow with. At least, until he saw the hurt they caused to those he cared about. Once upon a time, it had never bothered him. Because he’d never had anyone to care about except himself.

And now he didn’t think anyone could hate Michael more than Michael. All the disgust and loathing he’d once targeted at humans was now turned around and focused in on the monster he was behind the mask.

“Hey Michael. Don’t worry about all that stuff Glenn said. I believe you’re really Michael.” Jason tries to comfort, patting his back; “And so does Eleanor. Her head’s just all screwy right now because of that flu you created.”

“People don’t need to keep mentioning that!” Michael says, annoyed.

True, it had once been his greatest accomplishment. It had been what kickstarted his career in the Bureau of Human Affairs. His colleagues had groaned at him for ‘shaking things up’, for wanting to focus on psychological torture over physical, but he’d been so proud of himself for trying something new.

Now that same great achievement of his past was being used to torture someone he lov…

“Jason.” Tahani exits the house and joins them on the porch; “You should probably talk to Janet. I think she’s a bit shaken after the whole ‘I exploded someone’ mayhem.”

“Okay.” Jason looks at Michael one more time; “One last time. Would you take the suit off for my birthday?”

“You’re dead, there are no birthdays.” Michael points out.

“My death day then!”

He rolls his eyes; “I’ll think about it.”

“Sweet!” Jason cheers as he goes back into the house, chanting; “Fire Squid! Fire Squid!”

Tahani shakes her head as she comes to join Michael; “I swear that boy will always be the most surreal thing I’ve encountered since I died.”

That is saying a lot and yet Michael can only agree. Next to Eleanor, Jason was always the one who surprised him the most, though rarely in the most enlightening ways. There was no denying the guy’s trusting, essentially too naïve to live, heart. Then again, he lacked the memories Michael had restored to Eleanor and Tahani. They were aware of all the times he'd turned on them, shown his true, malicious colors every time they figured out the truth. They knew just how cruel he could be.

“You sure you wanna be alone with me out here? Aren’t you afraid of the big bad imposter?” Michael sulks.

“Oh, don’t try to brood, Michael. You don’t have the brow for it and you could never pull off all that black.” Tahani teases back at him; “Plus you’re supposed to brood on a rooftop, not a perverted cokehead’s front porch.”

He takes it from that tone that Tahani still believes he is the real Michael. It should bring him comfort that at least two of his human friends believe in him. But Eleanor…

Michael always thought Eleanor understood him better than any human could. She had started out as trash who crawled out of fire, intent on burning the world around her, before realizing that was no longer an option and she chose to be different. To be better. That is Michael’s existence narrowed down from thousands of years to a mere thirty-three. No one understood the moral struggles he had to go through more than Eleanor.

He believed that she and Chidi were soul mates. Or at least the closest thing to such a concept existing.

But Eleanor was like a twin flame to his own. Binary stars orbiting each other. They saw the worst in each other, accepted it, then saw through all the bullshit to the best parts hidden within. So long as Eleanor trusted him, believed in him, Michael felt like all the ethical struggles and headache-inducing morality puzzles were worth it, just to be the good honorary human she’d said he could be. Without that, what was the point?

And how was this not good enough brooding? He even had the full moon above working for him.

“I don’t think you’re Vicky. That demoness was one of the worst thespians I’ve had to endure the performances of since I tried to be Russel Crowe’s musical-singing coach in Les Mis. I seriously doubt she could pull off that hurt in your eyes that’s plain to see.” Tahani reassures; “If Eleanor was in her right mind-.”

“She seemed pretty lucid to me right now.” Michael cuts her off; “Has she made her decision?”

“Yes. She wants you to call the Judge so we can reset.” Tahani informs him; “It’s a shame but it does seem to be our best option if it gives her peace of mind.”

Will it? Even if the Judge cures her of Sleep Mode, will she really trust Michael again? She had said it herself. She didn’t know him anymore. What good would he be to them if they had to be looking over their shoulders all the time, wondering if he’s betrayed them?

He knew what this was. A classic trolley problem. Risk Eleanor’s sanity and the experiment or lose their progress and be down to their last chance at saving the universe?

It was a good thing Michael had solved the trolley problem long ago now.

“I have a better idea. I’ll blow myself up.” He says, standing up straight.

Tahani gawps at him; “You’ll what?!”

“I’ll blow myself up using Janet’s broken lie detector thing.” He shrugs, content in his choice; “That way you can all continue the experiment and Eleanor won’t have to worry about if I’m sabotaging everything.”

“Michael, that’s suicide! I mean that is _literally_ suicide!”

He moves to touch her arm, not liking to see her upset; “It’s not, Tahani, it’s like I said with Glenn. I wouldn’t die, I’d just take a few months to reform, and you can use that time to get the experiment back on track. Just please, make sure you get all my goo in the container, I really don’t wanna come back shorter.”

Tahani grabs at him before he can go to look for the device.

“And what about Eleanor? She’s still sick! You’re the only one who is able to go near her, Michael. She needs you!”

He hesitates, wincing a little. These past couple days had been both two of the best and also two of the most emotionally draining days of his existence. He’d enjoyed spending time with Eleanor, he’d had fun despite the rigged go kart video game and the rude insults to his musical performances. He had liked the feeling of being…needed. Then, at the same time, he had been twisted up with guilt over the fact that Eleanor was in agony from something he’d helped bring into creation. She was suffering by his own hand, while his other took care of her.

The very idea of leaving her to the madness causing effects, knowing full well all the scars and heartache her abused brain held within, made his juice run cold. If he abandoned her now, sick and scared, then he was no better than…

“She has Janet. Janet can break into the Good Place and steal something to help her or she’ll develop a cure, there’s nothing she can’t do.” Michael truly believes that; “Just…watch over her for me, until I get back. Take care of each other.”

He squeezes Tahani’s hand. He wishes she didn’t have to look so sad, it really did make this even more painful than it was no doubt going to be when parts of him were going to be splattered on Mindy’s wallpaper.

“I wish I was saying this under better circumstances but…Take it sle-.”

“MICHAEL!”

Damnit, was he ever going to get a chance to say it?

The two of them turn to see Jason running out of the house. He catches his breath, looking white as a sheet.

“I went into Eleanor’s room to check on Janet and saw her taking a needle out of Eleanor’s neck. I asked her what it was and she said it was some special medicine. I tried to talk to her about what happened with Glenn and how she shouldn’t feel bad he’s a puddle now. She said she was fine but I told her she could talk to me if she wanted, girl. And she said thanks Jason.”

Michael and Tahani listen and stare vacantly back at him.

“…And?” They assume this story has a point.

“Don’t you get it? She said thanks, Jason! Janet always says ‘not a girl’ when I call her girl!” Jason explains, rather desperate; “Guys….I don’t think that’s Janet.”

It sounds insane, at first. Michael is all but ready to wave it off as Jason taking this spy interrogation thing too far. How could Janet be anyone other than Janet? She was his oldest friend, surely he would notice if there was…

Wait.

Eleanor had suspected Michael because he’d been the one constant companion since she went into isolation. It had been Michael who had helped to feed her, pass her drinks, watch over her as she slept and fretted and wept, all too much stress for one reformed demon to sit through if not for the good moments they’d shared.

Except Michael hadn’t been the one delivering or conjuring up the food and water. Everything had been handed to him by Janet. What reason would he ever have had to distrust her? True, she had seemed rather more…vicious, lately, slightly more tempestuous. He had put that down to frustrations with the experiment.

If he’d been wrong, if Janet wasn’t who she said she was…

If this Other Janet was putting a needle into…

“ELEANOR!”

Michael rushes past Jason and back into the house. Tahani frowns at Jason before the two of them follow Michael inside. He charges for the door to Eleanor’s room and pushes it open, frantically, nearly tearing the doorknob off.

His fears are confirmed when he sees the room. Empty. No Eleanor, no Janet, just a lone stuffed Minion toy, abandoned at the foot of the bed.


	3. Part Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will Michael be able to face his literal past demons to save Eleanor and Janet?

_He can’t remember the last time he laughed so hard. It must have been a good couple of centuries. Maybe not since Demoncon 1780 when one of the main spectacles had been a group of humans forced into the brand-new centipede swimsuit prototypes. Oh, how there had been so much wriggling! And screaming. And laughing, mostly from the demons._

_All those years since, Michael had been searching for something new to give him that much of a buzz, that high, as watching humans suffer in new and humiliating ways had brought him._

_How ironic that, today, his joy had come from having fun with a human rather than at a human’s pain._

_“Would you say I helped you today?” Eleanor asks, still clutching the giant, deformed doll he had won for her as it was the easiest thing for the claw to grab._

_Wasn’t it obvious? He was still grinning like a loon._

_“Oh, definitely! I forgot about my problems, I had fun and I won this…ugly, yellow toddler, which is just the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!” He answers her, holding up the hideous child._

_Where had the time gone? Why was it so easy to make the hours disappear by doing pointless, random activities? It must be a human trick. No wonder they waste so much time doing whatever gives them a burst of happiness despite the fact it serves no functional purpose and distracts from doing good, helpful things._

_It’s a strange, rather startling sensation within him as he starts to understand something about humans he had never even considered before._

_Eleanor smiles, jovially, at him; “Well I’ll see you tomorrow, **friend**.”_

_It’s that word which does it._

_Something snaps._

_He pauses, watching her turn in a swish of blond hair as she exits his office. When she’s gone, he wants to laugh. Except it’s not a maniacal, ‘oh that silly, little human dumbass’ laugh. It’s a laugh from the anxiety that’s appeared from out of nowhere in his guts. What is happening? What has he been doing?_

_Michael spends the next two hours pacing around his office, tossing the minion toy between his hands._

_This day had not gone to plan at all!_

_It was supposed to go thus. He summons Eleanor to be his assistant to find the ‘fault’ of the Bad Place, which she clearly must know is her. He tortures her with insane and boring tasks like interrogating rocks or deciphering the neighborhood’s code which she can’t read. She wasn’t supposed to ask him out for lunch but he’d agreed because, sure, help gain her trust and manipulate her some more. She would work out the truth too quickly if he kept her isolated in dullness. And then she had suggested they have some fun._

_That hadn’t been part of the plan. But Michael had been curious._

_Now, here he was, several hours later, coming down hard from the buzz of spending so much time with a human had given him. So many new experiences he’d only witnessed from afar before, all so new to him that he’d had no choice but to let Eleanor lead him by the hand. It had thrown off his whole game-plan. That must have been her intention the whole time! Sneaky little maggot._

_Friend? Ha. A Bad Place employee friends with a gross human. How ridiculous! He’d sooner be friends with Janet. Even that was laughable._

_That smile she had given him, all the smiles and squees and cheers and giggles, felt like poison in his flaming essence. Every second he pictured her face, all lit up with affection, it twisted at him. Because it could never be real. He had to cause her pain and, for some ridiculous reason, it was apparently impossible for him to balance both the image of Eleanor’s joy and the image of her agony at once._

_Finally, after wearing out the office carpet, he shoves the minion into one of his cabinets._

_Nice try, Shellstrop. She had tried to get under his fake skin, weaken him, soften him up so he’d be on her side. She has no idea what she’s dealing with!_

_He loathed Eleanor. Just as he loathed every human._

_She would pay. He’d double down hard on the torture from here on out. A paperclip shower followed by a boat load of guilt and pressure should kick things off._

_Still…the arcade was a blast._

_He doesn’t go with Eleanor again. Or any human. It was a foolish idea and tainted the experiment if he risked getting close to them. Sometimes he would go with a demon, show them the ticket trick, explain the appeal of the prizes in the claw game. None of them would get what he felt. And not a single time brought him up to that same level of giddiness that he’d experienced with Eleanor._

_Why not?_

_Why is it not the same?_

_Hundreds of experiments go by, reboot by reboot, until he begins to question if any of it is worth it. The humans emotional torment in every version is always spoiled by that sly little blond trashbag figuring it out. And, at one very low point, Jason._

_Before the start of Reboot #798 he finds the minion toy while looking for some files. He’d gripped it tight and held it at arm’s length._

_“Why, huh? Do you have the answers?” He asked the stupid toy; “Why does she keep figuring it out? Why can’t I just…cut my losses and swap her out with someone else from the Bad Place?! Why does she have to be so annoying and clever and…cute…”_

_Michael shakes his head and goes out into the waiting room. The green letters on the wall spell out ‘Hi. Everything Is What It Is’. He stands in front of the woman sat on the sofa, her eyes closed, her body and mind in suspended animation. He snaps his fingers._

_Her eyes shoot open and Eleanor throws her fingers up before her face._

_“-SIC!”_

_She then stops, blinking, taking in the realization that she’s no longer in her living room, surrounded by her friends. Eleanor looks at Michael before the hate surfaces again in her eyes._

_She leaps up to her feet; “What the fork did you do?! Where’s Chidi and the others?”_

_“They’re all waiting to be woken up again. I erased your memories and then you figured out this was the Bad Place. Again. Then you did it to me again and again and, fast forward three centuries or so, we’re now here. Not that this one will count, I just needed to talk to you!” He wags a finger in her face._

_Eleanor reels back in disgust. Clearly, she would rather eat dirt flavored Frozen Yoghurt than help him._

_“Wait. We’ve been beating you, over and over, all this time? You really do suck, don’t ya.” She taunts him; “So what is this now, you’re finally giving up?”_

_“You wish! I still have a few last-ditch plans to try out.” He is running out of ideas, he can’t lie; “I just needed this version of you for a moment, the one that started this headache of mine!”_

_She folds her arms with glee; “I’ve never been prouder of myself than I am right now for knowing how much torture I’ve put you through all these years.”_

_He can’t help but laugh, devilishly._

_“Spoken like a demon.” Michael counters, before worrying for a moment: “Wait, is that what you are? Is this Shawn punishing me for messing up so he sent you in to fork with my head and make me think I’m just doomed to fail forever?”_

_“No, dude, you brought all this on yourself! You tried to fork with the wrong humans so I’m here to drive you crazy.” The Arizona girl smirks, tilting her head._

_Michael isn’t sure whether he wants to snap her head off or…_

_“Why? Why do you get such a kick out of making my existence miserable, but I can’t get to revel in yours?!”_

_“Oh, I dunno. Maybe because we were friends?!” She suggests, heatedly._

_That stops Michael in his tirade. It wasn’t the answer he had been expecting. It sure as Hell wasn’t the answer a Bad Place employee would have given. Concepts such as friendship, support and love were considered gross and unnatural to his kind, no matter how amiable they could be with each other, if they got on well. Companionship with a human, however, was as wrong as French kissing a worm to them._

_Eleanor isn’t joking. That’s easy to see. The confidence is flickering in her eyes. She obviously is regretting the words once they’ve left her mouth._

_“F-friends?” He can barely get the sound out._

_She lightly scoffs; “Yeah, man. I honestly thought you were my friend. You seemed so happy for me to be here, you kept reaching out to me, you protected me from Trevor and Shawn as best you could…And I believed it was real. I believed it so much I was prepared to board a train into literal hellfire if it meant you wouldn’t be retired, do you remember?”_

_Of course, he does. It had just been part of the act to mess with her mind. However, he hadn’t expected her to offer herself up for him._

_Michael nods, conflicted. No one had ever offered to do something like that for him before._

_“And then I found out it was all just an act. You never cared about me, you never wanted to be my friend. You never believed I could change or wanted to help me. My real friends, Chidi and Tahani and Jason and even Janet, they all were there for me and I was for them and it was real! We all had something…no, have something, that you will never understand. Because you’re a monster.”_

_That was a fact he had grown up with. Yet, this was the first time it had felt like an insult._

_“Look who’s talking, Dress Bench.” He throws back at her but his energy is lacking once she’s wounded him._

_Eleanor shrugs; “I’m scum. I’ll admit it. I’ve been just as cruel and thoughtless and selfish as you. Difference is I’m willing to admit to it. I’m trying to change, to be better. And sure, I’ll continue to screw up here and there, but so long as I’m doing something to rescue my friends by spoiling your experiments each time, it’s worth it, Mikey.”_

_He can’t help but admire her indestructible spirit. Eleanor Shellstrop may not be a demon in disguise but she’s also no mere human. He wants to know her. He wants…_

_“…And if I did want to understand?” Michael asks._

_“Huh?”_

_“What if I wanted to change, like you did? What if I…tried to learn to be…better?” He asks, words failing him a little. This is new for him; “…Maybe be less of a monster?”_

_Eleanor looks dumbfounded by that._

_“Uhm. Maybe, I…I dunno, I know jack shirt about what demons are capable of, morally speaking, but…I guess Chidi would say it was right to give you a chance…But why would you want that?”_

_He holds up the minion toy from behind his back._

_Eleanor stares at it before letting out a small laugh of disbelief._

_“You still have that thing?”_

_“Yeah. I can’t seem to get rid of it. I try and throw it out or disintegrate it, even tried eating it, but I just…can’t will myself to. And I don’t have the slightest clue why. Do you?”_

_She pauses, looking between the toy and the architect. A knowing look starts to shine from her eyes, the anger depleting to something else. Mockery? Pity?_

_He’s frozen, rather lost and unsure, as she steps closer to him and touches the minion’s bald head._

_“I think I know why.” She says, softer now; “I think I might have gotten you wrong. Maybe you’re not beyond saving. Maybe you’re only a monster for as long as you keep choosing to be.”_

_“Why would anyone choose that?”_

_He didn’t choose it. He was born this way. There was never a choice._

_“Easy! Being a monster means you get to feel powerful, in control, show all those annoying twerps beneath you how much better you are.” She grins and makes good points; “Except it also means you feel lonely. So, you just get even more mean because, clearly, you being lonely is their fault and not yours. Right?”_

_He nods. That did make sense._

_“Wrong. It is your fault if you’re pushing people away on purpose.” She explains; “And you gotta ask yourself, is being a big, scary monster worth being alone? I think that you, same as me, went a long time believing it was. But then you found someone, maybe more than one person, who made you think…maybe it was worth shedding the monster to be close to them.”_

_The very idea sends shivers beneath his human suit. This is all he’s ever been, an Eldritch abomination. Never before in his entire life has he contemplated the possibility he might be…more. No one has ever believed that he could be more._

_“You really think so?” He asks, sounding rather small for a six-thousand-foot tall fire squid in disguise._

_Eleanor nods; “Speaking from experience, bud. It could be you just need someone to nudge you along the right path. You say the word, I’ll get Chidi to help teach you ethics the same way he taught me. You’ll have a chance to ditch the demon. And maybe one day, one crazy day, I might even be able to call you my friend again.”_

_He smiles at that, a little breathless. Yes. Yes, he would like that very much._

_“If we were friends then we could, perhaps, hang out? Have fun…together?” He asks, hands moving a little nervously._

_She laughs, not unkindly; “Well yeah, dummy. We could test to see if your strike record is still going strong.”_

_“And I’ve got a whole list of songs we could do for karaoke! I can see us knocking something like ‘It’s My Life’ out of the park!” He suggests, oddly giddy again._

_Suddenly Eleanor’s smile is no longer a mere memory but something real, again, right in front of him. For someone whose spirit is so messy, there is so much light in those eyes._

_She touches his arm; “And all you gotta do is stop torturing us, obviously…”_

_Michael’s expression shifts, the brief flicker of hope instantly eclipsed by humiliation and anger. He roughly pulls away from her touch._

_“Oh, of course! I should have known there would be some sorta catch! Sneaky little Shellstrop, you nearly had me again!” He sneers at her, dropping the toy on the floor._

_She frowns up at him; “Dude! I was being serious! What is your deal?!”_

_“I’M A DEMON! DEMONS CAN’T CHANGE, IDIOT!” He shouts at her, finally letting all the pent-up anger from three hundred years spill out; “DEMONS CAN’T GET BETTER AND DEMONS CANNOT HAVE…FRIENDS!”_

_Eleanor barely flinches from his tone. Older men throwing hissy fits was the least scary thing in the world to her. The worst part is that she doesn’t even look angry. Just sad._

_“If that’s what you wanna believe, sure.” Eleanor sits back down and folds her hands in her lap; “Go on, erase my memory again, start attempt number eight hundred or whatever. You made your choice. Hopefully you’ll make a different one in another decade or so.”_

_“Don’t hold your breath. This was just a blip.” He gets his fingers ready again._

_“No skin off my nose, pal. One day me and my friends will get away from your little rat maze for good. And you’ll be stuck here, all on your own. Alone with nothing but regrets and an ugly yellow toddler.”_

_She closes her eyes and, after a pause, Michael snaps his fingers._

_*_

It had been the one memory he hadn’t restored to Eleanor. For whatever reason, he was more ashamed of his behavior during those few minutes than any of his other acts of cruelty. Even after seeing through his game and knowing what he was, Eleanor had offered out her hand in friendship, and Michael being a short-sighted, ignorant demon had slapped it away.

He had wanted to give the memory back to her along with the toy. He’d wanted her to know just how much that day had changed him, slowly but surely, that temptation of friendship worming its way into where his heart should be. How, after hundreds of wasted years, he’d finally tried to confront her about how he really felt.

It was too late now. Eleanor was gone. Taken from him.

Michael sits on the empty bed, staring at the minion in his hands. He’s too devastated for tears. Too guilty to let the self-loathing take over and throw stuff around the room. Oh, how a part of him would love to cast off his skin and smash through the house in a rage of teeth and flaming tentacles.

What did this house or this experiment or anything matter anymore if she was gone?

He’d been born in a cave, deep in a dimension where sunlight was just a myth. And yet he’d never felt so surrounded by darkness until this moment. He was ready for it to swallow him whole.

Except there’s a clicking noise nearby which yanks him out.

“Michael! MICHAEL!” Tahani snaps her fingers in front of him.

He blinks, dizzy, as if she has just popped him like a balloon and dragged him down to the ground.

“What? Huh, what?”

“You’ve been sitting there, staring at that thing, for twenty minutes!” Tahani berates him; “Jason just ran to the station, but Janet’s already sped out of here on a train! She’s taken Eleanor! Now is not the time for you to have one of your funks!”

Janet? Janet took Eleanor?

No. That couldn’t be the case. Jason had to have been right. Clearly everything was bonkers tonight.

“That wasn’t Janet. Not our Janet.” Michael whispers, anger rising up again as he fully realizes what this means. It puts into context everything that has been going wrong for the past month.

All this time he’s been so focused on being there to support Eleanor, to make sure this experiment was a success, putting his trust in Janet to make it all run smoothly. He hadn’t even noticed that wasn’t his Janet. His oldest friend, his partner, had been trapped somewhere else without anyone coming for her because they’d all been so stupid. The humans at least had the excuse of being just dumb mortals. Michael should have known better.

Instead it had been left to Jason to figure it out. Again. Having Jason be the first to catch onto something was the fastest way to give Michael chest pains.

The Jacksonville stoner himself comes running through the door, panting heavily.

“I kept running along the tracks but the train was going too fast! I wanted to throw something explosive, but I didn’t want Eleanor to get burned.”

“Good call.” Tahani pats his shoulder.

“Michael? Where did they go? Where’s real Janet?” Jason asks.

The architect puts the toy down, looking dejected; “I’m gonna take a wild guess and say the Bad Place.”

The one place in all of the cosmos that Michael never wanted to set foot in again.

“Then we gotta go get them back! Right? What are we waiting for?”

He looks up at Jason, who is a buzzing bundle of energy, raring to go. The boy has no hesitation about running into literal Hell to save them.

“He’s right, Michael. What are you waiting for?” Tahani repeats, sternly.

She’s also not quaking in her heels like one would expect. He can read the fury in her eyes, the way her shoulders are squared, and her fists clenched at her side. The two of them both have more courage in their silly human sticks than Michael has.

He’d been feeling so lost. Eleanor had been the flicker of light that he’d followed for so long. Studying her, feuding with her, learning from her, protecting her, mentoring her. It had felt like there was no direction to go with her gone.

But he’d forgotten that there were two amazing cockroaches left here to show him the way.

Michael gets to his feet and takes a step, then another, then marches into the living room.

He waves his hand and summons a screen in the air.

“What are you doing?” Tahani asks.

“Making a call.” He answers.

There’s a ringing icon on the screen along with the name of the contact.

Tahani seethes; “Shawn! I wonder what diabolical words that monstrous fiend has to say for himself!”

The call is answered, and Shawn appears on the screen, hands folded in front of him and smiling;

“Good evening, my dear friends.”

“TAKE THAT BACK, YOU BRUTE!” Tahani shouts with a pointed finger. She pauses, noticing everyone frowning at her in confusion; “Sorry…I might have pre-loaded that a little.”

Jason rubs her back, no doubt admiring her spunk.

Michael glares at his former boss; “Shawn. You know why we’re calling.”

“Oh, yes. I can see from how few of your human friends are left that Bad Janet is on her way here right now with Miss. Shellstrop. I’m sure your Janet will be happy to see a familiar face. She has been missing you all terribly. Especially you, Jason.” Shawn taunts.

Even Jason is too angry to speak. Tahani reaches to hold his hand.

“That whole thing with Chris wasn’t the sabotage, was it. It was just a decoy so you could swap Janet out with an imposter.” She spells it out; “I knew all of that seemed too easy.”

“We still had you fooled all these weeks, long enough for Bad Janet to infect Eleanor with Mikey’s little wonder virus. I always did think Sleep Mode was when you peaked and what a shame it was when the project was discarded. But Bad Janet found more than enough samples in our vault to test it out on your group’s team leader. Eleanor will be our new guinea pig while we perfect your work to use on more humans, which we’ll have plenty of once your experiment fails.”

Michael advances a step; “If you lay one single claw on her…”

“I won’t need to. My claws will be deep inside her brain, swirling it around like scrambled eggs, having fun with all those fears and insecurities she has. It’ll be Anti-Christmas come early!”

“You’ve crossed the line this time, Shawn. We’ll call the Judge. She already warned you before about trying to fork with us, she’ll have your head when she hears about this!” Michael threatens.

Shawn barely seems bothered; “So she’ll use my skull as her coffee cup for a millennium or more. Big deal. My guys will still be here to mess with you on my behalf and you will keep failing, just as you always have. I’ll take being a novelty mug so long as it means making you miserable.”

This wasn’t even about Eleanor or Janet or any human soul at risk of damnation. This was all just Shawn’s way of getting back at Michael for turning against them.

“It’s not really them you want, is it. I’m the one you want to torture so why don’t you just take me?!” It’s not as if he wouldn’t willingly hand himself over.

“Because that would be too easy and you would still get to be the hero.” Shawn points out; “I can hurt you much better this way than any form of Retirement. I know suffering eternal torment means nothing to you now. I figured the best way to bleed you dry was to go right back to how I could upset you when we were lava buddies. By stealing your favorite toy and breaking your favorite pet.”

Michael bares his teeth; “I knew it! I knew it was you! HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO KORZOFF?!”

Tahani reaches for him.

“Michael! Present day dangers! Focus!” She reminds him.

“Right, right, my bad.” He shakes his head, fuming; “Listen to me, Shawn. Don’t try to call our bluff. This is your last chance. Give us our friends back, unharmed…or else.”

“Wow, I’m so scared.” Shawn mocks, holding his hands up; “What’s a cowardly traitor and two pathetic humans gonna do to stop me, an actual devil?! Please. All I’m doing is collecting a debt. Eleanor Shellstrop belongs in the Bad Place. She was always going to end up here. I’m just saving time.”

“And Janet?” Jason argues; “She ain’t yours, dude! She ain’t anyone’s!”

“Janet is collateral. Tell you what, if I’m able to collect all the humans who belong in the Bad Place – you, Tahani, Chidi, Brent and the others – I’ll send Janet back to the Good Place warehouse she came from. Freshly rebooted and marbleized of course, don’t want any issues there for a while. Do we have a deal?”

“No!” They all respond.

Shawn shrugs; “Can’t say I didn’t try to reason with you. No matter. I’ll be getting friendly with you all very soon. Until then, I’ll give Janet and Eleanor your warmest regards. Not that poor, lost Eleanor will be able to receive them where she is now. Bye bye, dumbasses. See you in here.”

He ends the call with a flick of his wrist.

Michael is left gritting his teeth and steaming as the juice bubbles beneath his skin in place of human blood.

“Well? Are we going to call the Judge?” Tahani asks; “I can’t bear the thought of Eleanor and Janet trapped in that place! Who knows what they’ve been doing to Janet all this time?! And Eleanor…she’s still so ill! She won’t have the strength she needs to hold on…”

“I know. But he’s right. If we call the Judge then we’ll have to reset and keep dealing with the Bad Place messing with…Jason, what is that?!”

He can see the young man holding a bottle of rum and stuffing a rag in the neck.

“Uhm…nothing.” He tries hiding it behind his back.

“Were you going to throw a Molotov cocktail at the phone screen?” Tahani asks.

Jason tries to look innocent, failing as usual, then takes the rag out and puts his lighter away.

“Actually, buddy, you might wanna hold onto that.” Michael tells him.

“Always, I sleep with it. Why?”

“Because we’re going to follow Bad Janet into Hell and we’re going to save our friends. If there was ever need for firepower, this would be it. That’s if you feel like it.” Michael offers.

Jason’s face lights up; “OH YEAH, HOMIE! I can’t wait to punch that bully Shawn in the mouth!”

“He’ll probably eat your fist like a chicken nugget if you get that close, but I admire the confidence.” Michael praises.

He knows that he should probably try to persuade Jason to ignore the compulsive thoughts in his head to use explosives to fix his problem instead of being patient. There will be a time for that. Right now, however, Michael has never understood Jason’s emotions better. He will try to save Eleanor and Janet as quickly and safely as possible. However, if all else fails, Michael is more than prepared to rampage through Hell in his true, chaotic form, smashing and burning everything in his path until he has the ones he adores back safe and sound.

Janet. If it was just her then maybe his temper would be cooler. Not because he didn’t love Janet, she was his greatest confident and truest friend, but because he knew how advanced she was. How fearless.

But Eleanor…

Eleanor at her full strength was a force to be reckoned with. Michael had no doubt she could fight her way out of Hell with a coat-hanger and a broken glass of vodka. But this wasn’t Eleanor at her best. Eleanor was currently trapped in her worst fear; total vulnerability. She was already suffering and no doubt it was about to get so much worse. The very thought makes Michael want to shriek.

_I will save you. No matter what it takes. I’m coming._

He turns to Tahani; “You’ll be okay holding down the fort while we’re gone?”

Tahani reels back as if Michael had just slapped her.

“Why, of course! I mean no. I mean yes, I mean…Being in charge…on my own? No Eleanor, no Janet and no you?!” She’s knocked for six it seems.

“You’ll have Derek. I know it’s not ideal but it’s better than being completely powerless. Besides,” He touches Tahani’s shoulder; “There is no better hostess these humans can have, is there?”

That clearly boosts her confidence, judging by the smile brought to her face.

She follows them both to the train station after Michael and Jason have donned some inconspicuous undercover outfits. Glenn’s wooden handcar is still there on the tracks. It seems only fitting that Jason brings along the bucket of goo they collected the exploded Glenn’s essence in.

Before they board, Tahani embraces the both of them, tightly.

“If you don’t all come back safe, I will…be speaking to the manager!” she threatens, tears in her eyes.

Jason kisses her cheek. Michael still thinks kissing is gross and pointless but, as something human to try in case he doesn’t make it out of where they’re going, he kisses Tahani’s forehead. He hopes this at least gives her the confidence to realize how capable she is on her own.

“Just do the best you can. That’s all we can do.” He tells her before getting on the cart.

He looks at Jason as he grips the handles.

“Let’s go save our girls.”

Jason shakes his head, smiling; “Just one girl.”

Michael smiles back. He pushes down on the lever and they’re off.

*

Janet stands in her magnet jail. She feels like she should pace but walking is still needless and unappealing to her. Besides, if she gets too close to the magnets then it will send her loopy. She needs to keep a clear head if she wants to spot her best moment of escape.

Also, even though time lacked the same meaning to her as it did other beings, she had to admit she was bored. It was the one accomplishment she would give to the Bad Place.

The rest of their attempts to torture her had been a shambles.

The Michael suit may have looked convincing but all the constant rehearsals she’d had to bear from Vicky as she tried to perfect Michael’s mannerisms and personality had been awful. They at least seemed to realize that it would only be fool proof as a way to torture the others would be to make sure the one who had known Michael the longest, herself, was convinced it was him.

Yeah. That wasn’t gonna happen.

She worries about what Bad Janet will do to her friends. To Jason. She tries not to let it paralyze. Instead she consumes it, molds it into energy, into her motivation for getting out of here. She can’t be angry if they don’t realize it isn’t here. They’re only human, after all. Except Michael who is not as smart as he likes to think he is. They will know the truth eventually and Janet has faith they will come for her…as terrible as that might be.

The door to the corridor outside her cell opens. Great. More Vicky rehearsals. Janet hopes she’s at least improved on impersonating his laugh.

Shawn enters, followed by a Bad Janet, for once without her phone in her hands.

“Good evening, Janet! I thought it only fair we update you on how our plans are developing.” Shawn tells her, as if conducting business with a colleague.

“Let me answer that for you. They’re going terribly, as usual! And they always will because you suck!” She grins, answering as if it were any other question posed to her.

Shawn smirks; “Wrong answer, I’m afraid. We have exactly what we wanted. Bring her in!”

Janet frowns, wondering what Shawn is on about this time.

A couple of the demons who manhandled her into the cell now enter, dragging someone new. And by drag, they are literally having to drag the poor soul, holding up her upper body while her feet slide limp and useless on the floor. They’ve been dressed in brown, filthy scrubs like most of the victims here. Janet frowns, fearing that she recognizes the bowed head of blond hair before she even gets a look at her face.

She steps forward, touching the bars before getting shocked.

“Eleanor?!”

This wasn’t supposed to happen! They had never said anything about planning to take her friends! Not until the experiment failed.

For the first time since she had been revived in the Bad Place, Janet feels truly afraid.

“Eleanor, what happened?!” She tries talking to her but there is no response.

Bad Janet laughs and tilts Eleanor’s chin up so Janet can get a look at her. She sees the woman’s eyes. It makes Janet recoil, a little. Both of Eleanor’s eyes are now just vacant, gray irises surrounding dilated pupils. She doesn’t blink. There’s no reaction there. No life. Only a frozen twinge of terror in her expression.

“She’s not really that talkative anymore, princess bitch.” Bad Janet mocks, pinching at Eleanor’s face.

Her friend would be slapping that cow into next week if she was with it right now. Instead there is only a tiny whimper and flinching.

Janet tries to get closer; “Eleanor! Eleanor, it’s me! It’s Janet, real Janet!”

“She can’t hear you. The amount of Sleep Mode I dosed her with, she’s living about six different nightmares at once. Besides, I don’t think it would be much comfort to her if she did see you here. Not after the last thing she experienced was you stabbing her in the back…By which I mean neck.” Bad Janet gloats at her not-sister.

Janet realizes at that point this Bad Janet is the one who has been impersonating her all this time. Lying to her friends. Being with Jason…putting him through who knows what.

“Sleep Mode?! That’s Michael’s virus.” She states. She had discovered his past deeds in the Bad Place and stored them in her data banks at some point during her fifth hundred and sixtieth reboot.

She had never confronted him about it. She’d know how ashamed he was of his old life.

And she understood why it would be his greatest of shames.

“Isn’t it wonderfully ironic that something from Michael’s past comes back to torture him through the human he loves the most, after so many years of trying to find the best way to torture her himself.” Shawn is way too proud of himself over this.

Janet turns her attention back to the demons. Looking at Eleanor’s face, so devoid of her spirit, hurts too much to let on.

“Oh, really? I know why Sleep Mode failed. It’s demons being at their most lazy!” She teases them; “It’s Eleanor’s own mind torturing her. You can’t wake her up…and you can’t intervene.”

“Actually,” Vicky enters the room; “I happen to have been working with some of Michael’s memory altering. I might know how we can all have fun with little Eleanor here, many, many times. And the best part? Half the time, I don’t even have to wear the suit.”

“Great! So you don’t have to bother trying to act either.” Janet sneers at her. She looks back at Eleanor, unsure if she can hear any of it.

She tries reaching her hand out, ignoring the burning pulse of the magnets as they pull her back.

“Eleanor! Can you hear me?”

Eleanor frowns, raising her head. Her skin is so pale and pasty. Her fever must be at boiling point. She takes one look at Janet before letting out a scream and convulsing backwards. The demon handlers grip her tight, unceremoniously.

Janet feels a surging rush of anger like never before.

“You better pray I don’t escape these magnets. Because when I do; I will rip your eyes out of their sockets and shove them up your backsides before strangling you with your own tongues!”

Almost every demon in the room seems taken back to hear a Good Janet speak so dark.

Of course, she’s no mere Good Janet. Not anymore. She’s not Bad or Good. She just knows that Michael is right. Nothing in the Universe matters more than her friends.

Shawn frowns; “Huh. It’s a sad day when a Good Place Janet sounds more terrifying than one of our own. Go fix that now or it’s a one way ticket to Marble-ville for you.” He looks at Bad Janet and then at the handlers; “You. Take Miss Shellstrop to her cell. I’m sure in whatever moments of lucidity she has, those clown paintings will be a real comfort to her.”

The handlers nod and drag Eleanor, who is still shaking like a leaf, down the corridor. Janet hates to have to watch her leave, especially in the state she is in.

Vicky flexes her hands; “I’m going to pay Eleanor a few visits too. I already had so much fun taunting her as Real Eleanor before. I have so much more to work with now.”

“Do that. Then prepare for Demoncon. Mentally torturing Eleanor Shellstrop, the Woman who tried to fuck up the Afterlife, will be our prime exhibit!” Shawn grins.

Janet finds picturing all the different ways she can eviscerate the demons before her a great distraction from her despair for Eleanor. Maybe Hell was influencing her after being here so long. If you can’t beat them, join them.

“Michael will come.” She says, defiant. And Jason? She doesn’t know whether to wish for that, worried for how he would cope here. Afraid he would get hurt.

Shawn scoffs at her; “After what he believes he’s caused, I doubt he will get up off the weeping fetal position on the floor. He’s broken now, sweet Janet. No one is coming.”

*

Their handcar descends the sloping tracks into the tunnel leading to the Bad Place. It was a long, anxious ride. He restored Jason’s memory, for all the good it did. It remains to be seen.

Michael hates being back at the birthplace of evil. Back. Home.

He had told Jason to refrain, as much as he could, from hurling a Molotov cocktail at the first hurdle they come across in this place. At least until they manage to find Eleanor and Janet. It felt rather hypocritical then when he pulls out the fake lie detector that had exploded Glenn. A little surprise he had grabbed from Mindy’s spare bedroom before they left. Michael makes sure it is set and ready to fire.

He didn’t want to explode the demons he had once considered his friends, even if in hindsight those friendships were shallow and problematic. But this was war now. Shawn had struck first with his dirty little scheme. It was only right that Michael be prepared.

Eleanor had once called him a monster. _A monster by choice_.

For years now he had been trying to run away from his past. Forget his true self. Prove that he could be the guardian angel Eleanor and the others had mistaken him for when he first introduced himself to them in Attempt One. It had worked well for a while, until his past had caught up with him, then hurt the ones he cared for in the worst way possible.

Never again. If his old so-called ‘friends’ wanted a demon to mess with then he would show them a true demon. If saving Eleanor and Janet meant becoming a monster again; so be it.


	4. Part Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to rescue Eleanor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: blood, physical and emotional torture

Reality feels as though it’s coated in grease. Every time she thinks she’s managed to grip onto something solid, it quickly slips between her fingers.

The hallucinations are no longer hard, vivid scenes. They’re not single memories picked out from her dumpster fire of a life. Instead they are all constantly mashing together, without any order, a chaos of shouting and mistakes and emptiness. Eleanor didn’t know how it was possible to feel as though everyone in the cosmos had left her, leaving her drowning in isolation, and yet still have so many voices around her that she just wanted to scream at to get the fuck away from her.

_At one moment, she’s being cornered by a group of students in her high school, turning on her for finding out she’s the one who has been stealing cookies from the cafeteria and getting everyone else in trouble. She runs down the hallway only to trip and collapse through a door-_

_Then she’s in the middle of one of her colleague’s baby showers. They’re all waiting for her to present her gift but she has nothing to give. How the hell should she know what babies need? Why did she even get invited? And when she confronts the mother to be, she’s told that this was an attempt for them to be closer. To be friends. Eleanor laughs…except she doesn’t want to._

_She’s not that person anymore so why is she laughing? Why didn’t she at least try to bring some stupid gift, even if it was just a bottle of tequila for the mother to have to herself when the kid is driving her nuts?_

_Everyone in the party glares at her, shakes their head. They’ve never seen anyone so disgusting._

_The floor collapses beneath her and, next thing she knows, she’s drowning. There’s water all around her and she doesn’t know which way to swim because there’s no clear light for her to see the surface. Just flashes of color fading in and out of existence. Also, shrimp. There is so much shrimp around her, gigantic and completely inedible. Finally, there comes a noise and she turns to see a trolley steaming towards her, horn blowing in her ears, headlight closing in and ready to blind her before-_

_She opens her eyes._

_The water is gone and she’s bone dry._

_There’s writing on the wall in front of her._

_‘You Lost’._

_Eleanor frowns, gripping the couch she’s sitting on. She knows where she is but that’s impossible._

_The door to the next room opens and her head turns._

_“Eleanor? Come on in.”_

_It’s not who she was expecting._

_Chidi stands in the doorway, wearing his brown sweater vest and a pleasant smile on his face. Eleanor gets to her feet. She tries to say his name, but her voice is gone. What is happening?! He goes into the next room and she follows, continuing to try to call his name but making no sound._

_There is no office in the next room. Instead she’s walking in on a wedding ceremony._

_She stands at the back of the packed congregation, full of so many faces she doesn’t recognize, as she watches Chidi and Simone exchange their vows before the Officiate. Chidi looks so happy as he clasps his wife’s hands and says to her the words that cut deep into Eleanor’s heart. They look so perfect together._

_“You always wanted to be part of a wedding that was dramatically interrupted. Go for it.”_

_The tears leak from her eyes but Eleanor remains a silent spectator._

_This is torture. This is everything she feared when she said goodbye to Chidi. But she can’t try to stop it. She can’t let herself become that person again. If he’s truly happy, truly in love…_

_God, why does she have to watch though?!_

_There’s a scream from Simone as she bursts into flame. Chidi calls out, reaching for her, only to grab onto floating specks of ash. Everyone in the room is gasping in terror._

_Chidi looks up and over to Eleanor. His eyes burn with a hatred she never knew he could hold towards anyone, least of all her._

_“You! This is all because of you, Eleanor!” he shouts down the aisle to her; “You promised to take care of me! You promised to save us!”_

_Words continue to fail her. She can only stand there, hands flexing at her side, feeling so helpless._

_Everyone in the room turns their head to scowl at her. Suddenly, she recognizes so many faces. Her mother, little Patricia, her shallow friends, the environmental nerds, all her ex boyfriends and one ex-girlfriend. John and Brent are shaking their heads at her, as if she were dog shit beneath their shoes._

_“We were all rooting for you, Eleanor! We believed in you and you let us down!”_

_Eleanor wants to say how sorry she is. She wants to promise to try and fix it all. One more chance. Surely. she can have just one more? She can’t have run out._

_Her heart shatters as Chidi falls to his knees and clutches Simone’s wedding dress, letting out a sob._

_No…She never wanted…_

_The crowd start to jeer and curse her, throwing pieces of shrimp at her head. Each one is frozen solid, hitting her as hard as a barrage of sharp rocks. She has nothing to shield herself with and tries to run in the opposite direction. She doesn’t know what to do! She’s all alone. Even her favorite food is being used to torment her. The voices attack her from all corners, as if she’s standing in the eye of a tornado._

_With all her strength, her last ounce of willpower, Eleanor turns and tries to escape._

_“Stop fighting it!”_

She finally manages to jolt herself ‘awake’ _,_ the damn Voice continuing to ring in her ears after her eyes have opened.

The most terrifying clown painting grins at her from the opposite wall.

She finds herself in a small, bare cell with cold, steel walls. There’s no window, just a flicking lightbulb high above her head. She’s curled up in the corner, on the floor, as there’s no bed. Her body still feels as though it’s been run over by a snowplow. It really is the most uncomfortable position she could awake to. Her pajamas have been replaced with a filthy set of scrubs she recognizes as the same ones ‘Real Eleanor’, or rather Vicky, had been wearing the first time she’d seen her. Her feet are bare and freezing.

And yes, she still feels sick as a dog.

Eleanor wraps her arms tight around herself, trying to sort through the chaos in her mind, to retrace the steps she had taken in reality to wind up here. Something terrible had happened. She’d been tricked. Poisoned. Betrayed.

The door to her cell opens.

“Eleanor.”

The voice alone is enough to lift her spirit up off its ass. She gazes over at her visitor. He stands in the doorway, smiling at her.

She can hardly believe it.

“Michael…You came for me?” She whispers, her voice barely usable. She’s so fucking exhausted.

Her legs are still too weak for her to stand. She reaches forward, almost ready to crawl to meet him half-way so he can get her out of here. She wants to cling to him, tell him how sorry she is for getting it wrong, for not trusting him.

Michael doesn’t rush over to her. Instead he takes two steps forward and smirks down at her.

“Of course, I came. I couldn’t let anyone else torture you now, could I?”

Her body shivers as that familiar, sinister giggle echoes over her. Eleanor scurries back to her corner in a vain attempt to get as far from her visitor as possible. There’s a flicker of panic, of falling for the lie, before she remembers what had been revealed to her.

She shakes her head; “You’re not Michael.”

He frowns, clearly miffed at being called out so soon.

“Aren’t I?”

“I know all about the suit. Glenn came and blabbed about it all. So, it’s not gonna work.” Eleanor gloats, despite the beads of sweat on her face; “Try again, loser.”

For a brief moment, the demon in the Michael suit looks ready to stomp on the ground like a three-year-old before storming out.

“Glenn turned traitor, huh? Hardly surprising.” They kneel down to her eye level; “No matter. We know you’re famous for seeing through our plans, sweetie. So we borrowed a little trick from your demon daddio.”

She frowns; “What does that-“

The demon in the Michael suit clicks their fingers.

Eleanor blinks.

Damnit, she’s so sore! She gazes around the room in total bewilderment. Just a second ago, she had been in Mindy’s spare bedroom, tucked up all warm in bed. Was she having another hallucination? Were they starting to get worse? This all felt too vivid, too rough and cold, to be a dream.

She looks at the man in front of her.

“Michael? What’s happening?” She asks, quaking with fear; “We…We were watching a movie, weren’t we? You said you were going to get something? How the fuck did we end up here?”

It hits her for six when the curse comes out unfiltered.

“Wait! This is the Bad Place!” She says for the umpteenth time.

Michael doesn’t snap his fingers. Instead, he smiles with delight.

“Right again, as usual, Eleanor.” He tells her, taking joy in her confusion and terror; “I wasn’t planning to bring anything to you. You were the one I was bringing home at last.”

Eleanor shakes her head. This had to be a dream or a trick.

It didn’t make any sense. Barely a moment ago, she’d been curled up against Michael’s side, close to falling asleep in his arms as they watched that cheesy Disney flick. He’d been taking such sweet care of her. She trusted him more than anyone. How could he turn on her like this? The only believable answer is that, he couldn’t. He would destroy himself before betraying her.

“You’re not Michael!”

“Oh, come on!” the impostor stands up, frustrated; “How did you know this time?! You don’t even remember learning about the suit!”

“Suit? What suit? There’s a suit now?!” Eleanor has no idea what is going on.

It sickens her that anyone would try to make her believe Michael would hurt her again.

Her head is starting to pulsate. All she wants is to close her eyes and wake up at Mindy’s. To be safe and protected. Being sick and taken care of by her friends was not the nightmare she had feared it to be.

The demon turns on her again and she flinches.

“We’ll have to keep practising, won’t we. It’s not like we don’t have eternity to get it right.” They hold up their thumb and middle finger together.

Eleanor knows all too well what that heralds.

“No! No, WAI-“

_Snap._

*

Employee of the Bearimy.

Michael wanted to pummel the disgusting grin off the face of the one in the picture staring back at him. His own face from a thousand lifetimes ago. It was the smile of a being who had been so proud of himself. A being that had just been praised by his peers for torturing countless humans. He hadn’t even believed he was doing something righteous or that the humans deserved it. In truth, he hadn’t given a single flying thought to the humans who had wept and pleaded for mercy as he set scorpions and electric eels on their flesh.

He had done it because it was fun.

It took a lot to resist the urge to smash up the portrait. They couldn’t risk drawing attention or letting the demons know they were here yet. All of them were busy setting up for Demoncon, no doubt. Most of the corridors he and Jason passed, stealthily, through were empty.

When they did come across the odd demon in passing, Jason surprised Michael by how well he could shift into character.

“On your way to the show, guys?” One of the admin guys from the Department of Famine nods to them.

“You betcha. Want a glass of vulture blood on us?” Michael offers, keeping his hat somewhat over his brow in case he’s recognized.

“No thanks, mate, I’m doing dry January. Apparently, it’s something humans do to make other humans think they’re dickheads! ‘Thought I’d give it a go. Not as fun as I expected.”

Jason perks up; “I tried not drinking for a month. It was great until I set fire to that Ferris wheel.”

On second thought, that might not have been acting on Jason’s part. If nothing else, it made the other demon chuckle and high-five Jason before moving on.

Piecing together conversations from different passing demons, it seemed as though there was going to be some sort of show, most likely at Shawn’s big panel. Usually this was when a new form of torture or a very special Guest of Dishonor presented for entertainment. The year Adolf Hitler was given the spotlight and offered up for everyone to mercilessly maim had been a Con that no one would forget in a hurry. Nor the one with Ted Bundy. Or Mother Theresa.

Good. If everyone was distracted, then it meant it was less likely there would be many to guard Janet and Eleanor.

“Is this the part where we use the Invisibility Cloak to get past the guards?” Jason whispers when they come across a row of holding cells, having tracked where Shawn was last seen.

“Yeah, about that. I lied that I had a cloak, there’s no such thing. Just wanted to make you think I had a plan.” Michael confesses.

Jason doesn’t seem as bothered as Michael had feared. Instead he reaches for his pocket.

“Oh well! Time for Plan B!” He retrieves his lighter.

“No, no! Not Plan B! Let’s try Plans A-Z and then lower-case a-z before doing that plan!” Michael stops him, grabbing his wrist; “Or at least let me try something stupid first.”

He might not have an invisibility cloak. However, he may have the closest thing to such an item.

Michael removes his hat and fixes up his suit so that his default clothes are no longer hidden beneath the trench coat. He fixes his bow tie and his cuffs. This attempt would either work like a charm or, much more likely, wind up with him getting diced up like beef mince.

“Hey there, fellahs!” He waves at the two henchmen at the door.

They frown; “What are you doing here?”

They’re not grabbing him and tearing his limbs off. That is a good sign.

“Didn’t Shawn tell you? He wanted me to get some torture time in with the new prisoners. Get them all warmed up in misery before showing them off at Demoncon. It’s gonna be a blast!” He tries doing some jazz hands.

The guards share a look and then chuckle.

“You sure do know how to run a good show, Vicky.” They praise him, completely oblivious; “Go on then.”

“Thanks, boys.” He slides his way between them to the door. He then hands them a red token; “Here, why not go to bar and have a free rat piss, on the house. Tell ‘em I sent ya.”

“Damn, you are one swell smoke bitch.”

That manages to get rid of the muscle. As soon as they are around the corner, Michael whistles for Jason to come around and to the door.

Thankfully, it’s unlocked.

When Janet looks up at the two figures entering the room, she at first rolls her eyes at Michael. She clicks her tongue, clearly expecting Vicky again. Then she clocks Jason and her eyes shift to a look of confusion. And heartache.

“Janet!” Michael sighs overwhelmed to find her unharmed.

She frowns at them; “So you made a Jason suit now too, huh? I take it you gave up trying to make the other one work. I mean if you couldn’t convince me you were Michael, the least you could have done was make him smell better.”

“Janet, it’s really…” Michael pauses and sniffs his arm. What smell? Never mind; “It’s really us, Janet. I swear!”

Jason moves forward and touches the bars of her cage.

“Missed you so much, girl.” Even he looks rather lost for words with how relieved he is to see her again.

Janet stares at him for a moment. She must be trying to work him out. It surely would be awful for her to be so unsure about something, especially the most important part of her heart. She must know better than to succumb to false hope.

She leans closer to him; “What am I?”

Jason smiles, blinking, sheer devotion in his eyes; “Not a girl.”

And with that, Michael can see Janet’s eyes light up. Convinced. He’s never noticed before how much those eyes have changed, evolved, from the vacant pupils of the Good Janet he had stolen all those many Bearimy’s ago.

“Jason!” She exhales, reaching for him; “You came! You both came!”

Michael gets to work on turning off the magnet cage so he can let her out. It’s a rather simple device, a common one in place to keep faulty Bad Janet’s under control until maintenance would arrive.

“Nobody kidnaps our not-lady.” He quips.

As soon as the cage opens, Janet moves to exit, only to find a pair of magnet cuffs appear on her wrists. She moves, somewhat dizzy, into Jason’s arms as they take their intoxicating effect on her.

“Crap. Must be a failsafe in case of escape.” Michael explains; “Are you okay?”

Janet tries to steady herself; “Mmmm’fine….Fine! I just…need a m-moment…If weren’t a mega smart rebooty Janet, these would pro’lly have me actin’ shilly!” She giggles and then turns back to Jason; “Oh, I love you, Mr. Mendoza.”

Jason is happy to hold her and kiss her there, letting it turn passionate all too quickly, the two of them grabbing onto each other’s hair.

“All right, all right, stop that, you two!” Michael intervenes, “This is the best we can do! We don’t have time to try to get them off here, we’ll have to get you back to the handcar and try to pick the cuffs off on the ride back.”

Janet nods, scrunching her face up; “You’re right! You’re right! You’re Michael and you’re right! We gotta get outta here! And you gotta get…Get…Argh, stupid magnets!”

She grunts roughly, giving the handcuffs a violent shake, sending out a powerful surge of energy that crackles and pops.

They remain on her wrists but their blue glow is flickering, weak. Disrupted.

“Okay. That’s better.” Janet takes a breath, managing to straighten up; “Still no powers but I’m not making a fool of myself. What was I saying? Right! Eleanor.”

That has Michael’s attention.

“Where is she? You’ve seen her?” He asks, touching his friend’s elbow.

“They showed me her when they brought her in. Michael, she looked awful! I know what they put in her.” No more needs saying about that; “If you get us out of here, I should be able to create a cure, based on the data I have on Sleep Mode in my backup files. If it’s not too late then, hopefully, it can pull her out of her madness.”

Madness. Eleanor. Hearing someone else say the word made it far more terrifying and real.

Janet knew about Sleep Mode? She knew it was his baby? She had never said a word about it. Even now, when their friend’s sanity dangles by a thread, she doesn’t judge or condemn Michael for it. None of that is important right now. All that matters is finding Eleanor and leaving this cursed dimension with the both of them safe.

“Go with Jason to the train tracks.” He tells her; “I’ll find Eleanor and meet you there. If we don’t show up before someone catches you, just go.”

“We can’t leave you and Eleanor here, dawg!” Jason states, loyal as ever.

“He’s right, Michael!” Janet is just as torn apart at the very idea of them being separated, especially after she’s been away from her friends for so long.

“There’s no time for arguing! Eleanor poured everything she had into getting this experiment working. She refused to let us go to the Judge and risked damaging her psyche just so all her work, our work, wouldn’t be for nothing! Tahani doesn’t stand a chance of keeping the neighborhood in check without you, Janet. You need to go back! And you need Jason at your side.”

The two of them share a tense, knowing look. They know he’s right.

Janet reaches to grasp Jason’s hand.

“We will wait as long as we can.” She promises. It’s all she can do. How limited she must feel right now is more than enough torture for her to endure.

Michael appreciates their devotion. Honestly, he’s not sure how he would be able to escape without Janet to call a train. Maybe he could steal a Bad Janet? Failing that, he was rather swift in his true form. Perhaps he could skitter along the train tacks through the celestial plane, clutching Eleanor in his one of his tentacles. Hopefully Janet would be able to cure her inevitable burns as well as her frazzled mind. That’s if he managed to resist the urge to eat her.

It was good to know there was an option, if nothing else.

*

_Snap._

Eleanor winces, slowly opening her eyes. The room around her is so dark. She can barely make out the white, eerie faces of the clowns framed all up the walls. Her face is stinging. She raises her hands to touch her cheek only to yelp at the feel of an open wound against her fingertips. Blood is running down her chin and now, also, her hand.

A slurping sound makes her look up from her curled-up spot on the ground.

Michael is leaning against the wall, sucking on his fingers as if they were coated in chocolate. It’s plain to see they’re not. It also doesn’t take a genius to work out whose blood he’s licking.

“So salty. Then again, that was one of your nicknames in High School, wasn’t it? Salty Shellstrop?” He grins, maniacally, at her.

He knows it was. He knows everything about her.

No…Not _him_.

“You’re…not…Michael…” Eleanor struggles with the pain. It’s all becoming too much, the physical abuse now added to the mental strain.

The demon rolls his eyes back, dramatically. He wipes the blood on the handkerchief folded in his front pocket before pacing around her.

“You can keep telling yourself that all you want. It won’t make your little fantasy real.” He tells her, sounding so bored.

Eleanor quickly works it out, this isn’t the first time.

Her fingernails are worn down, a couple nearly torn off, which she adds up with the scratches up the door. There are old wounds on her hands and feet as well as the fresh cut on her face. She’s been here a while. It feels like forever. When she attempts to look back, at ‘Before’, when there was sunshine and colors and taste, her memories are tainted with the hallucinations plaguing her.

They take her in shifts. One in, one out. She’s chained to a rock on a beech with the tide ever closing in.

“I’m in the Bad Place…This isn’t a dream…” If she says it aloud then it’s one piece of sense she can hold onto. An awful, devastating truth but at least she knows for sure.

Micheal…’Not Michael’…kicks her in the ribs.

Then he laughs.

“You expect me to give you the answers? When have I ever spoiled something like that for you before?” He mocks her, watching as she clutches at her middle in pain; “We’re going to be here a long time, Eleanor, until you accept the truth.”

She clenches her jaw; “I will never believe you’re Michael.”

“I don’t give a rats ass about that.” He raises his voice, reaching to twist her hair; “Like it or not, I’m Michael. I’m the only Michael. I’m the Michael who loved making you feel inferior to everyone else, the Michael who made you face up to what a little shit you are, the Michael who lied to you and gaslit you constantly because you’re such a rube who will give anything to believe someone could be the daddy you desperately wanted!”

He throws her head against the wall where it lands with a crack and her gasping.

“I’m Michael. That’s the truth, baby. Deny it all you want. The only acceptance I want out of you is for you to admit what you’ve always known. You belong here. In the Bad Place.”

That’s what this is all about?

She rubs at her head and struggles to hold it up, her whole body growing weaker.

“Nobody belongs here. Not forever. It’s stupid and pointless!” She mutters; “You can’t punish people for eternity for what they do wrong in the one chance they get at life.”

“Oh, we can. And we do.” Michael nods.

Not Michael, damn it!

“Feeling tired, are we? How about you take another little rest?” He puts his fingers to her temple.

She tries, desperately, to keep herself awake. Grasp onto what energy she can muster. She doesn’t want to go back in her own head. She doesn’t want to be bombarded with visions and flashbacks and all sorts of grotesque imagery. Letting everyone down, seeing her friends hurt, watching helplessly as every soul in existence continues to be tortured because she fucked up.

Chidi’s corpse. Tahani’s severed head. Michael exploding and never reforming. Jason crying. All her worse fears came to life when she closed her eyes.

“No…No, please…” She never begs. She never shows herself to be weak, to give in.

Until now.

“I belong here…I belong here…” Anything to get them to stop!

“A little louder, sweetie! Say it like you mean it!”

Eleanor grits her teeth; “Ah…fuck it! FUCK YOU, ASS HOLE! I DON’T BELONG HERE!”

The demon presses on her head and her mind is snared by the virus again. She’s pulled, viciously, back down into a treacherous montage of nightmares that threaten to suffocate her. The voice turns into a pair of cold hands choking the breath out of her without any relief of death.

When she finally resurfaces, the wound on her face has been scarred over.

Not Michael is cupping her chin, his face all too close.

“…I still remember, dipshit.” She mutters, never having endured so much agony in her existence; “Still not Michael…”

He tilts his head; “You really want to believe I gave a crap about you, hmm?”

“You did. You sacrificed yourself to save me.” She remembers that, clear as day. He’d been as close to her as he was now when he’d fitted that pin to her lapel; “That was real…Y-you can’t…lie about that…”

“Oh, Eleanor.” He sighs, stroking her face with his red fingers; “I only pushed you through that portal to get you out of the way so I could explain the rest of my plan to Shawn.”

She frowns. That couldn’t be the truth.

“You see, I explained to him this fun idea I had for getting the humans to go down to Earth again, make them thing they had a second chance, then having that hope dashed again! And then making it appear like you, of all people, had a chance to rewrite the rules of the afterlife and save humanity. Shawn found it hilarious! I mean, c’mon. You? A trashbag from Arizona, the savior?! Be real.”

Eleanor had expressed such doubts herself. She was just a girl from Arizona. Someone who lived a problematic life because she’d grown up believing the world was against her.

“You were the one who said…”

“That you were special? That you were the chosen one?” He starts to laugh; “Oh, you poor sap. I restored every memory of all the times I lied to you and you still fell for that, hook, line and sinker.”

There’s only so long the human mind can hold out. How long has she lasted so far? How did Jeremy Bearimy work in the Bad Place? It felt as though it had been months, if not years, since she was at Mindy’s. She tried to picture the healthy, smiling faces of her friends only to be met with the visions of their mutilated corpses from her nightmares.

She whimpers, gripping at her hair.

“I…I don’t believe it…I won’t…” she starts to crack.

All she wants is to go home.

The demon reaches to touch her head again; “Time for a nap?”

“NO!”

“Then say it!”

She slaps at his hand as it gets closer. The more she fights, weak and pathetic, wriggling back into the corner of her cell, the louder her head gets. The voice tells her to give up. Give in. It’s all She ever says.

“Say it!”

“I belong here!” Eleanor says, aloud, hands covering her face.

The demon laughs at her; “I belong here…?”

He’s waiting.

She lets the tears fall. There’s so little energy left in her now. Not enough to struggle. Perhaps she can give in, if only for a moment. Give in. Be a good girl and listen to the voice.

Eleanor sniffles, snot on her lip. What else can she do?

“I belong here,” she whispers, eyes glazing over as she looks at her torturer; “Michael.”

*

It’s worse than he imagined.

After seeing Janet and Jason off, Michael had gone to search for Eleanor’s cell. He’d never felt like more of a jerk than having to look in on all the trapped souls being tormented only to have to leave them because they weren’t who he was looking for. If it was remotely possible, he would have released them all and found a way to take them back to the Medium Place. He knew that wouldn’t work.

They just had to get out of here. Find Eleanor, reunite with Janet and Jason on the train, then get the Hell out of…Hell.

Finish the experiment. Save all souls.

First step, most crucial of all, was to rescue the most important girl in the Universe; the girl from Arizona. She was the best hope they had of freeing each and every soul who was trapped, suffering eternal agony in the Bad Place and longing for a chance of redemption that has yet to come. A chance of hope.

_Eleanor, where are you?_

The Vicky act works on the receptionist, a giant cactus monster with two mouths and a coffee mug that says I Hate Doomsday (Not). He’s able to find out where they’ve been keeping Eleanor. It turns out to be no ordinary cell. It’s, in reality, a tiny pocket dimension existing on another plane that’s linked to the Bad Place. One where time runs on a different level to the rest of the Afterlife.

The dot above the ‘I’ in Jeremy Bearimy.

He can see the signs of Eleanor’s struggle. The scratch marks, the blood, tufts of blond hair on the floor, the echoes of her screams. It’s enough to make him want to blast the whole prison apart. Worst of all, for all the obvious signs that she was kept here for who knows how long, Eleanor herself is nowhere to be seen.

“Shawn must have come for her already.” Jim, the receptionist informs Michael; “I didn’t know Demoncon had started. The Boss never gives me time off! He was so thrilled to have the prisoner be this year’s main exhibit.”

Eleanor.

Eleanor was going to be the Guest of Dishonor.

*

Has she been buried alive?

Her brain shuffles between delusions and lucidity. It’s getting impossible to clearly sort them from each other.

There are heavy shackles on her ankles. She can feel those. Metal surrounds her, meeting her head with a slam when she tries to sit up. Her hands are too bloody and sore to try to feel for a latch or a loose panel. Anything to give her hope of escaping.

 _“Remember Mommy’s words? If all else fails, there is always something to gnaw through.”_ The Voice is trapped with her, _“How about your foot?”_

The fear that had consumed her since she awoke here is beginning to turn to animalistic rage.

Eleanor glares into the darkness, trying to picture the Source of the Voice.

“Get out of my head…before I crack open my own skull and tear you out…” she tries, weakly, to show her teeth. She had said what she had to with the Not Michael demon.

Make him…or her or them or whoever it was…believe she was broken.

And maybe she is? What did it matter anymore?

 _“That’s the idea, genius.”_ She laughs back; _“Go on. Smash your head against the wall. With any luck you’ll be able to knock me out of there.”_

Eleanor knows how close she is to giving in. Try every extreme measure to get her out of this damnation. The Voice is inside her. It – _She_ – wants Eleanor to turn on herself. Perform her own torture so the demons can kick back with a pint of anti-matter and watch TMZ. That’s the purpose of the virus, she remembers. Like a self-service check out.

The crate is moving. She’s being taken somewhere new. There are muffled voices beyond the steel.

She doesn’t miss the Fake Michael. With any luck, they’ve given up on that.

Worst of all, she wishes she could miss the real Michael. It’s impossible to tell how long they had her in that cell. She knows her memories don’t line up with the passage of time. They reset her, again and again, snap after snap after snap. Eventually they gave up and decided to go for the old-fashioned physical abuse.

It may or may not have been Michael beating her, cutting her, taunting her…but it didn’t matter. Enough damage had been done to make it so trying to picture the real Michael caused her blinding pain.

_“It will be so much easier if you just accept it.”_

Never.

_“Don’t you remember how simple it used to be? Back when you knew that, deep down, no one was ever going to love you? That every person you met who seemed all love and puppies was really as much of a douchebag as you?!”_

It’s not like that. No one is that black or white.

_“Demons are. That’s what he is. It’s what you could be to make all this better. After all, it’s so much easier to be a monster.”_

Easier. But lonely.

_“You’re alone now, hot stuff.”_

...Touché.

*

Michael keeps his hat on as he enters the conference hall. There’s quite a good turnout. About half the demons are not wearing their skin suits, mostly due to their natural forms not being too inconvenient in a smaller setting. He hangs back, staying low behind one of the signs advertising a concert with Elvis as he’s ravaged by flesh-eating harpies.

There’s too many familiar faces for him to risk trying to sit at one of the tables.

He has a decent enough view of the stage, despite the metal box that’s supposedly been left there as a footstall for the shorter demons. If they’re holding Eleanor then she’s most likely trapped back stage. He needs to find a way to sneak past the ushers walking up and down either side of the room. The Vicky act might work again but-

“Whadup, bitches and hoe-bags!” Bad Janet’s voice echoes on the loud-speaker, calling the crowd to quieten down; “Give it up for your Lord of Darkness and Unequal Pay; Shawn!”

Crap. Michael hesitated too long.

He watches as his former boss steps out to the applause from the gathering. Michael fights the urge to whip out the faulty lie detector and explode him then and there. Firstly, he’s not sure he would get the aim right this far back. Secondly, Jason used it to bust open a door and it’s still recharging. What made it more annoying was that the door wasn’t even locked.

He waits, patiently, as Shawn delivers his usual speech about how bored humans are getting of regular, genital pummelling torture and the need to shake things up. Funny, when Michael had tried doing just that, all he’d received was scorn and mockery.

Michael looks to see one of the ushers has moved away from the backstage door to get a cat’s eye martini. Now is his chance.

He tries to carefully creep past while everyone is focused on Shawn’s monologue.

“Today, however, I am pleased to say marks a new era for the Bad Place.” He announces; “I know many of you have heard rumors of potential shake-ups and talk of going into administration. You’ve all probably been worried that your jobs were at risk in threat of this new system. Well, rest assured, there will be no shake up. Our system, the one which has been in place since the dawn of time, will continue to exist for another ten thousand years at the least. This time, better and Badder than ever before.”

There’s a rumble of unconvinced murmuring around the crowd.

Shawn smiles, a glint in his eye; “Don’t believe me? Well how about I present to you; our Guest of Dishonor for this year’s Demoncon. The woman who tried to escape her damnation, who turned demon against demon, who tried to dismantle and disrupt our entire operation…is here with us tonight.”

Michael reaches the backstage door and stops dead in his track.

“Please put your hands or claws or suckers together….for Miss. Eleanor Shellstrop!”

There’s the sound of metal clanging to the floor. Michael turns to look back at the stage.

The steel container he had mistook for a plinth before has had its lid removed, the four sides falling apart. The raggedy hair of a small, battered woman raises itself up. For a split second, Michael is ashamed to hope they’ve made a mistake. Because that simply cannot be Eleanor. Matching the image of that fragile creature to the snarky sunbeam in his head was incongruous. Then he remembers the state of her cell. The signs of struggle for mental survival.

Gray, vacant eyes blink at the spotlight over her. Her white and purple hands reach up to shield her face as her surroundings become too much after so long in the dark. The gasps and cheers from those in the crowd make her recoil slightly, not that she has anything to hide behind except the shift on her thin frame. The chains on her ankles clang aloud with her slight movement.

Eleanor. Oh, Eleanor, what have they done to you?!

“Now some of you might find it difficult to recognize our special guest.” Shawn explains, stepping down from his podium; “You might be wondering if this is the same indestructible Eleanor who foiled our plans almost a thousand times over. The one who manipulated our colleague to turn traitor against his own kind. I assure you it is. What caused her to finally break as all humans do?”

He pulls out a vial of blue liquid from his pocket.

“This is what we have to thank. My latest invention that causes a complete mental breakdown in even the most headstrong and stubborn of humans. With this little baby, we have the ability to turn humanities greatest fears and insecurities against themselves, without needing to gather and transport all the scorpions and spiders from cell to cell. All their phobias are right there, ready, in their own head. And with our final modifications, it’s not possible for a demon to connect with those hallucinations and control them. Like a puppet master or everyone who ever played the Sims. I call it…Slumber Party.”

Michael groans into his palm. Seriously? Not only was Shawn going to steal his idea, but he planned to rebrand it with a name like that?

He makes a mental note to sue once this is over.

The crowd eat it all up, giving Shawn another round of applause. The noise is enough for Eleanor to clamp her hands over her ears. She’s nothing but a prop to them. A monkey in a circus that’s been prodded and poked into insanity.

She sways, dangerously, on her knees. She looks doped to the gills, but Michael can see from the beads of sweat glinting under the spotlight, it’s her fever. He can’t tell from her eyes if she’s drained from hope or barely even knows where she is anymore. Or who she is.

This has gone on long enough. It ends now.

He loses his hat and steps onto the stage, clapping his hands together.

Everyone in the room gasps again, Shawn turning to stare at the unwelcome surprise.

“Bravo, Boss! You’ve done us all proud!” Michael congratulates, ignoring how Eleanor’s head turns at the sound of his voice.

Shawn frowns; “Vicky? You’re not supposed to come on until the second panel.” He looks to the crowd; “No need for alarm, everyone! This might look like Michael the Treacherous Squid but is, in fact, another example of how the Bad Place is evolving with the times. This is our own Vicky in a custom-made Michael suit!”

There are more gasps of delighted awe and clapping. Michael tries his best to summon the smile of the man in the portrait he had passed on the way here, the one that had haunted him from his past. He mimics one of Vicky’s theatrical curtsies and waves, as if she were presenting the suit for them all to admire.

“We’re still working out some kinks in this one, hence the hairline and the smell being off,” Shawn confesses and Michael frowns.

What was wrong with his smell? Or his hair for that matter?

“But imagine the possibilities. Combined with Slumber Party, these suits are perfect for tormenting a human as someone they despise or, even more delicious, someone they love. The human can be brought back from their delusions, briefly, with a quick shot of adrenaline, only to be tortured by their friends or family.” Shawn explains; “And we have quite a show planned for you tonight of just how convincing these can be.”

Michael clears his throat and leans over to Shawn’s ear.

“Boss, I’d advise against bringing the Good Janet out. She still doesn’t believe it’s the real Michael.” He whispers, hurrying; “But I’ll have no trouble with this one.”

“You’re a sly little fox, Vicky. Go for it.” He winks back before addressing the crowd; “Everyone now sit back, grab some popcorn and watch as Miss. Shellstrop is reunited with her dear BFF, Michael!”

The lights go down. The crowd turns quiet, ready to enjoy the show.

Eleanor’s rasping breath and whimpers are all that can be heard. She keeps her head down, curled in on herself. Her matted hair hangs over her face, hands clutched over her front. She looks tiny.

If only she could appreciate what Shawn had just said in his speech. How afraid all these heaven-forsaken demons were of her and the influence she had. How her determination and leadership had shaken the foundations of Hell itself. Not bad for a girl from Arizona.

Michael steps closer to her, the other spotlight following him.

“Eleanor.” He says.

She shakes her head, letting out a small cry, refusing to look. His heart, or whatever he has, threatens to shatter. How long had she been through this? At what point did she break?

He slowly kneels before her.

“Eleanor. It’s me.”

A beat. He waits on bated breath.

Slowly, she starts to look towards him. Something in his voice must be different to how Vicky tried to mimic his speech. There’s uncertainty on her face. Fear watering in her tired eyes. Fear of hope.

She blinks, her brow contorting, searching for something.

Michael hasn’t got the faintest clue what he could say or do, with dozens of demons watching their every move, to prove to her it’s really him. All he can do is gaze back at her, trying to express through his eyes how sorry he is for all of this happening to her. Her eyes meet his and lock in silent communication.

_I’m here, Eleanor. I’m right here._

Does she hear his thoughts? Not likely. Something shifts in her expression, however. A slither of color returning to her eyes.

She shuffles forward, closer to him, reaching her hand to touch his face.

“…Michael? It’s really you?”

She knows. It makes zero sense, but she knows. Once again, she amazes him with her ability to see through any bullshit.

He tries not to tear up as her calloused fingertips feel around his eyes. Not here.

He gives her a warm smile and lays his hands, softly at first, on her shoulders. He leans in close to whisper a single word in her ear.

“Kierkegaard.”

He looks at her face again, wanting to check she understands him. There’s a twinge of confusion before the understanding settles. Her lips twitch, giving the tiniest of smiles.

Same as before. A leap of faith.

_It’s better translated as-_

Shut up, Chidi-voice in his head.

He holds Eleanor by the shoulders, then roughly pushes her back, letting out a cruel laugh that ruptures through the tense atmosphere of the theatre.

“Surprise, idiot!” He says, aloud; “I’m not here to save you! It was all a prank! Fooled you!”

Eleanor shudders, at first making Michael worry she failed to understand the plan. Then she crawls as far away as she’s able, pulling on the shackles keeping her chained to the stage, bawling with distress.

“Michael, h-how…How could you betray me?! I trusted you!”

She condemns him, straining her voice. She’s not the best of actors, especially not in her current condition, but it’s enough to make the audience cheer at the display.

Even Shawn is clapping his hands.

“Great work! A stunning performance!” He congratulates, still in his rather dry tone; “Now anyone else wishing to have a play with Miss. Shellstrop will have a chance to do so at our booth later on, after the Q&A session and autograph signing.”

“Boss, if you don’t mind, I’d like to take her back to her cell so I can get in a bit more torture.” Michael tells him.

“I don’t see why not. You’re developing a rather unhealthy addiction to your work there, Vicky, but I won’t complain. Go on, take her.” Shawn tosses him the key to undo her chains.

Michael walks back over and unlocks the shackles, grabbing Eleanor by the forearm, hauling her up. He hates to have to handle her so viciously, but he has to keep up the pretense while they’re all still watching. She’s light as a feather, limp and barely able to stand.

He takes the chance to lean in close as he straightens her up against him.

“I gotcha. I’m getting you outta here.” Michael whispers.

He can tell she wants to hold onto him, if only it meant not giving the game away. She has to grip onto his jacket so she doesn’t crumble. Her skin is so hot that it makes the old Fire Squid turn cold.

He waves in gratitude at the crowd, at the applause he had once yearned for, that now means nothing to him. Nothing matters more than getting Eleanor out of this place.

“What the here is going on?!”

An angry voice comes from the wings.

Vicky storms on stage, glaring across at Michael. Shawn turns his head either side to each of them, putting together what this implies, how he’s been fooled again.

“If you’re Vicky then…It can’t be!” He sneers in disgust at Michael.

Busted.

He swallows his panic and wraps one arm tight around Eleanor at his side. His other hand reaches for the device in his pocket.

Shawn advances towards him; “You had actually had the spiked balls to show your face here again!”

“Did you think I’d let you get away with stealing my friends?!” Michael challenges.

"Honestly? I thought you were too much of a snivelling coward do try anything."

Michael can take some pride in Shawn underestimating him. Again.

“He’s already helped the Good Janet to escape! I was going to rehearse my Michael performance and found her magnet jail offline!” Vicky says.

“I should’ve known better than to think you could be that convincingly annoying as Michael.” Shawn takes the moment to insult her.

Michael would feel bad for Vicky getting the blame for this. Then he remembers how she’s been hurting Eleanor in countless ways for who knows how long. He holds his friend closer, almost shielding her with his body, despite the fact they’re rather surrounded.

“Shawn. We’re leaving. You’ve had your fun. Let us go or I’ll…”

His former boss scoffs; “Or you’ll what? Throw your bow-tie at us?”

The crowd laughs.

Michael whips out the botched lie detector and aims it at Shawn; “I’ll fire this…demon blower-upper your Bad Janet decoy made for me.”

“Ha! Demon blower-upper. At least try to make that sound like a real thing.” Shawn mocks; “Guards! Grab him! Take the girl!”

Eleanor whimpers and hangs onto Michael, desperately.

_I won’t let them take you. Not again._

One of the bulkier guards, an old roommate of Michael’s from their college days, marches onto the stage and advances towards them. Michael’s gut twists with guilt. He knows Rufus is only doing his job. He knows it’s not personal. But neither is this.

He presses the button and Rufus bursts into blue slime, splattering over the stage, over almost every demon in the room. They all gasp in shock. Even Shawn is frozen. Stumped.

“Listen to me!” Michael takes the opportunity to speak while everyone is stunned into silence; “I used to be like you. I went to a million Demoncons and believed we were doing the right thing by torturing ‘bad’ humans. But we were wrong…I was wrong. The point system we followed blindly for so long is corrupt and Shawn knows this! We have a chance to change things for the better. And this human here…look at her!”

He keeps hold of Eleanor, half presenting her to the crowd, holding her protectively as she huddles close to him like a frightened child.

“She’s no threat to you! She’s not here to ruin your jobs or destroy anything righteous…She’s trying to make things better for all of us. Because no one is all bad, not even a demon. I’m proof of that, I’ve changed, and I still screw up. It doesn’t make me a monster. We’re only monsters…for as long as we choose to be.” He tells them all, “So please…make the right choice. Let us go.”

There’s a brief silence. Someone then raises his hand.

“Er, yeah. Guy with the snake beard?” Michael points him out.

“Name’s Bernie. Hi!” He waves; “Just wanted to ask…what if we choose _not_ to let you go?”

“Good question, Bernie. The answer is that anyone who stands in my way gets blown to pieces.”

The crowd almost immediately parts, clearing a path for Michael to escape. He feels Eleanor start to collapse against him, losing more strength by the second, so he scoops her up into his arms. It’s a good thing Fire Squids are stronger than the older man skin he inhabits, as well as how soft and weak humans are anyway.

He rushes off the stage and through the crowd that applaud in his wake. Maybe because they believe it’s all just a show, or maybe they believe in his speech. Either way, they all ignore Shawn as he shouts for them to stop clapping and seize him.

Michael races down the deserted corridor with Eleanor zoning in and out of consciousness.

The virus has been festering in her system, untreated, for so long. He worries her brain might be too scarred to be saved. He has a contingency plan if that’s the case. Hopefully it won’t come to that.

“Hold on, Eleanor. We’re almost there.” He tells her.

Someone’s footsteps echo behind them.

“You can’t save her!” Vicky calls out and Michael pauses; “Even if you manage to get her and all your little human friends to the Good Place…What do you think will happen to you?”

He turns to face her, a bit out of breath.

“What do you care what happens to me?”

Vicky gives a shrug; "I don't. But you must. You’re not bothered by the fact that when all of them are going off to Paradise, you’ll be left on your own? There’s no way a demon is getting into the Good Place. You’re a dick, Michael, but you’re not that stupid.”

He hesitates. He knows and has known for a long time now that there was a point zero one per cent chance he would be allowed in the Good Place. That he could follow his friends. The stories they grew up with told of Bad Place employees falling from Above. There were never stories of demons rising to Heaven. It was unprecedented.

It was unlikely. But it wasn’t the point of any of this. He’d made that choice the moment he’d put his senior management badge on Eleanor’s lapel, knowing it was highly possible he would never see her again. His fate didn’t matter so long as it meant Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, Janet and Jason were safe.

“I’m doing this for my friends, Vicky. I don’t expect you to understand.”

She sighs; “That’s what makes it so sad. You’re giving up everything you are for them and…what do they do for you? Do they even fully trust you? And when they all are told they can enter the Good Place but you have to stay behind, do you think they’ll give you so much as a passing glance?”

They hadn’t trusted him, no. Only because he’d given them more than enough reason to doubt him.

She’s had plenty of time to try to get inside his head and work out his motivations. One way or another she’s discovered how to play on his own insecurities as much as she did Eleanor’s. Worst of all, Michael can feel it having an effect.

Vicky steps closer, looking somewhat amiable.

He reels back, cradling his charge close like precious cargo.

“Touch her and you explode.” He warns, a slight growl in his voice, his natural fire glowing in his eyes.

It seems to please Vicky rather than scare her away.

“There you are. I can see the Fire Squid underneath that suit. We all have and we’re all still here. How do you think your precious human pets would react if you showed them all the teeth and fire and juicy, juicy tentacles?” She teases.

Obviously, he knows. Except for Jason, they would never look at him the same again. He would never be Michael again to them; just some gross, disgusting beast. Even he couldn’t stand what he really was.

“You belong here, Michael. You know it, I know it, Shawn knows it. He’s only pissed because he wants you back with us. Stop pretending you’re something you’re not.” She tells him, “Admit what you know is true.”

He takes a breath. He can’t. He won’t.

“Say it,” Vicky tries again; “Say ‘I belong he- ARGH!”

The panic on the demon lady’s face lasts for a micro-second before its splits itself wide open, along with the rest of her skin suit, exploding into blue goo all over the hallway. Michael blinks, shaken, a dollop landing on the lens of his glasses.

What on not-Earth?! He hadn’t even been holding the device.

He looks down to see Eleanor gripping it in her shaking hand.

“Go fuck yourself, you shitty ass actress.” She curses, taking what thrill she can in the lack of a filter. Her eyes glance up to Michael; “No one talks to my demon buddy like that.”

“Eleanor!”

He smiles at her, still rather surprised at her cruel but necessary act, and besotted she would do that for him. The moment hangs, briefly, Eleanor returning the smile before she falls unconscious again, head slumping against his shoulder, her face creased up in anxious torment as her mind takes hold of her once more.

He pockets the device and carries on running towards the train station, leaving Vicky’s bubbling goo behind.

She’s not gone, he knows that. She’ll reform and possibly be back for vengeance in a few months. That’s not something to worry about now. Nothing in this past life of his mattered now, to Michael, except saving the girl in his arms. Save Eleanor.

Not because she’s humanities' savior. Because she’s his.


	5. Part Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Janet needs to cure Eleanor, but can Eleanor heal herself?

With a flick of her wrists, Janet sends the Bad Place tunnel crumbling in on itself, once the handcar is far enough away. There had been a sparkle of euphoria in her eyes when they had finally unlocked the cuffs from her hands, her powers quickly returning after a month in captivity. It was good to have her back.

Michael wishes they could celebrate. They were hardly out of the woods yet.

He can’t tear his eyes away from Eleanor as she lays on the small, square platform. It doesn’t look the least bit safe, as if a single bump could mean her falling off onto the side of the tracks. They don’t have a huge choice in luxury right now. She continues to twitch and whimper in her sleep. He must keep helping Jason push the handcar so they can get back to the neighborhood as quickly as possible, otherwise he’d still be at her side.

“How fast do you think you can rustle up that cure?” He needs to know. Time is of the essence. Every second gone, the virus chips away at Eleanor’s psyche.

“Michael.” Janet tenses her voice, “You expect me to be able to invent an antidote to a disease which no one has had common knowledge about in a thousand Bearimy’s, with no lab equipment, no test subjects and all on my own?”

He nods; “Yeah, pretty much.”

Janet gives him that all-knowing smile. He’s just expressing the absolute faith he has in her abilities.

“Gimmie two minutes. First I have to read every single page of research on the study of viruses and antibodies.” She blinks three times; “And now I’m done. Sorry for the wait, a couple of them tended to ramble on.”

The not-robot kneels beside Eleanor, taking her temperature. She gently shushes Eleanor as the human woman mewls a little at her touch. Michael inwardly kicks himself. How was he not able to spot the difference between their Janet’s care of Eleanor versus the fake Janet? The other one had been so detached, so clinical and blunt. True, that may have been how an original Good Janet would behave as well. But their Janet was different.

Their Janet looks at Eleanor with almost maternal affection and concern as she checks her vitals and comforts her, stroking her hair.

“She gonna be okay?” Jason asks, rather childlike, the joy of having his lover back also tainted by one of his friends being gravely sick.

Janet’s lips twinge and she shakes her head.

“Her breathing is really shallow, she’s fitting less and her temperature is plummeting.” She states the facts, not without sorrow in her voice.

“That’s good, right? She’s not got a fever anymore. We didn’t even have to chuck her in a pool of ice.” Jason searches for the positives.

Michael understands, with a pain in his chest, why this is not good news.

“Sleep Mode always starts out with flu symptoms, peaking with a fever and high temperature, followed by delusions.” He explains, “When the fever breaks, the virus is just done with breaking the body down, focusing only on the mind. When the test subjects turned cold and still, it meant they were lost in their heads. Nothing but…comatose husks.”

“But,” Jason frowns; “I don’t want Eleanor to become a zombie. Especially not a boring zombie.”

The simple boy really could be rather precious in his innocence. Michael pats his arm.

“She’ll be okay, pal. Remember, this is my stupid virus.” He tells Jason; “If anyone can ruin something that I put years of thought and planning into, it’s our Eleanor.”

Truthfully, he says the words for his own benefit as much as Jason’s.

Looking at Eleanor now, her head limp in Janet’s hands, one wouldn’t have thought that less than twenty minutes ago she had shot a demon point blank and exploded them without a seconds thought. In fairness, that particular demon had been brutally torturing her for months, by the looks of it, so no one was going to be shedding any tears for Vicky. As Tahani had once said, Eleanor packed quite a lot of punch in that petite frame. She looked even smaller now after her ordeal. It was time for her to surprise them again.

“How about someone just kisses her unconscious body to wake her up? Like Cinderella?” Jason suggests.

“I’m not going to go through all the things wrong with what you just said.” Because there are not enough seconds in eternity for that.

Janet finishes checking her over. Eleanor gives a small cry when the warm hands stop touching her.

“She’s really cold, Michael. You need to try to warm her up while I work on this cure.” Janet tells him, stepping away so she has what little space she can on the handcar.

Michael tells Jason to take the wheel, which confounds the boy for a moment, before he explains it’s an expression and he gestures for him to push the lever solo for a while.

He takes off his trench coat and bundles Eleanor up in it, turning her into a beige burrito.

She should probably be wearing better clothes, some comfy PJs maybe, which Michael almost mentions to Janet before remembering how preoccupied she is. It’s not the best time to distract her.

“C’mon, Eleanor.” He whispers, touching her freezing face, “We’re almost home. Don’t you dare bail on us.”

Her eyes are rolled back, her mouth slightly open. Michael doesn’t think anything could hurt more than the fact that she can’t even tell him to go fork himself.

*

_Well this sucked._

_This was, by far, the worst place her delusional mind had brought her so far. Eleanor didn’t mind the snow. It appeared so rare in Phoenix that it had felt like something of a miracle when there was a dusting of snow on the fences, enough to roll into a ball that she could throw at the snooty girl across the road with the pink tricycle. It always made Mom laugh, she couldn’t stand the girl’s mother. Snow was fine. A blizzard? That was something else. Eleanor had always steered far away from ski resorts and mountaintops. She had no intention of freezing her butt off or saying goodbye to the sun._

_Now it didn’t seem like she had a choice in location or climate._

_She struggles through, up to her knees in wet, white powder, as more of it pours down with the wind. No way is she dressed for this! She has no boots, no leggings, no layers, no coat, no gloves, goggles, not even a damn puffy hat. Her feet are bare, still red and raw from captivity, her ribs bruised and her fingers bloody. She dreads to think what state her hair must be in, probably rocking the cavegirl look. The ugly brown shift that hangs from her shoulders feels about ready to disintegrate from the damp._

_This. Is. The…_

_Oh, who even cares anymore?!_

_She stumbles, collapsing in the heap. Her toes feel ready to fall off. She can’t even see where she’s going, surrounded by thick white fog and a ravaging wind. Why did it have to be fucking snow?_

_Was it because of that stupid movie?_

_Ugh. Why couldn’t they have watched Moana?! She’d probably be sitting back on a beach or chilling in a tropical ocean about now!_

_How long where they planning on keeping her here for? She’d trade this Arctic nightmare for the clown cell any day._

_Then, at last, she sees a silhouette before her._

_Eleanor breathes, arms clutching at her middle. Is it really who she thinks it is?_

_“Chidi?”_

_Part of her knows that it can’t be real. Her mind is trying to fuck with her again. Well, if that’s what it wants, she’ll give as good as she gets and enjoy it while it lasts._

_She staggers forward, forgetting the cold briefly, reaching out to him._

_And then she sees it for what it is._

_“Oh…Well, obviously!” Eleanor throws her hands up, her teeth chattering._

_She’s too cold to even cry. In fact, it’s easier to laugh, just a little. She reaches up to brush her fingers against the cheek of the ice sculpture, carved into the shape of her soul mate. It’s pretty good, she can’t lie. His smile and the detail of his eyes, all lit up in devotion or if he’s just finished alphabetizing his new bookcase, is so realistic. Eleanor has to make sure it is just a sculpture and that he isn’t frozen underneath._

_She cups his face, looking into his eyes that see straight through her._

_“I could really use my flashlight right now, babe.” Eleanor whispers, her heart aching; “I haven’t got a flying fork where I’m supposed to go.”_

_Should she even try to leave? Is this effigy of her ex-boyfriend the best that this wasteland has to offer?_

_Eleanor sighs and leans her face up towards Chidi’s…_

_Then she pulls back._

_“No, no, Eleanor! Do not lick the ice sculpture, you’ve had that go badly for you before! It’s what they want.” She berates herself, moving away._

_She then bumps into a second sculpture. Taller, this time._

_“Tahani…” She whispers, in awe, gazing at the shapeliness of her statue’s figure. There are sparkles and hues on the ice, despite the lack of sunlight; “…Still perfect as ever.”_

_She touches those elegant, long fingers as she passes by._

_A third statue greets her, holding two thumbs up, with the unfiltered joy of someone who just met his favorite football player. Oh, Jason. Such a beautiful dumbass._

_As Eleanor steps back, she realizes she’s stood in the center of a triangle, formed by the frozen figures of her friends. How long since she was with them? All four of them, together? It must be a whole Bearimy in itself. What she wouldn’t give for them to move, to touch her, to say something, to blink. She would sacrifice anything to see Jason’s smile, hear Tahani’s laugh, feel Chidi’s arms around her._

_“You’re all here…Except you’re not.” Eleanor says, her voice smothered by the wind; “Or…you are all here…and I’m not…”_

_Does it matter which it is? She’s alone. Alone in…_

_Eleanor lets out a spontaneous burst of laughter; “Oh! I get it! Iceolation! Ha! Good one, whoever or whatever this is! Crab, I’m so far gone, I’m punning my trauma.”_

_She clutches at her head and continues to laugh. She laughs because it’s too cold to cry._

_Eventually, she manages to do both._

*

“Okay. It’s almost ready. Quick, get her inside.” Janet orders, the four of them departing the handcar.

Michael carries Eleanor’s body, still cocooned in his coat, across the platform and into the waiting room once they finally arrive at the neighborhood. There’s a couch inside he can lay her down on, propping a pillow beneath her head.

He moves aside to let Janet prepare a needle.

“Yo, my girlfriend makes a hot doctor lady.” Jason feels the need to point out.

“I’m not those things. But I can be. Tonight.” Janet turns to wink at him.

Michael wants to complain at how this was not the right time for flirting.

Janet takes Eleanor’s arm, dabbing at a vein with a cotton pad, before she sticks the needle in, her other hand gripping her patient’s as she winces.

“Is that it? Will she be okay?” Michael asks, irrationally angry that she doesn’t instantly wake up, fresh faced, back to her old self.

Back to normal.

“It’s all I can do.” Janet explains, regretfully; “The virus is taken care of, she’s no longer contagious. But she still has to deal with the side-effects. She was in that cell for far too long without any treatment or care. Really, the virus should have put her in this state long ago, but they kept pumping her full of adrenaline to wake her up for more torture.”

“Can’t we just give her some of that too? Or a four-pack of Red Bull?” Jason suggests.

“It’s only a short-term solution. It’s harmed her so much more to keep being forced awake when she doesn’t have the energy or the time to rest properly in between. Like…turning a light-switch on and off. Eventually it’ll just burst.”

Jason goes white as a sheet and Michael thinks that Janet could have probably used a better analogy.

Her body won’t explode. Just her mind.

“What do we do now?” Michael asks, eyes constantly on Eleanor.

“It’s all up to her, if she’s able to use what I’ve given to fight this thing from within her.” Janet says, standing up and away from her; “With any luck, she’ll be back with us in a…Does anyone else smell burning yoghurt?”

Michael wasn’t even aware such a smell existed. It then hits him, slowly. Jason also catches the scent and goes to look out the window.

“Aww, man. Y’all might wanna look at this!”

Michael and Janet go to join him, staring out the window.

From the station they can see the town square. On fire. The fake residents seem oblivious, walking backwards and in circles, reciting binary code.

“What the fork is happening?” Michael asks.

“Oh, I think I know.” Janet groans; “Michael, stay here with Eleanor. Jason, go find Tahani. I’ll deal with the town and….DEREK!”

She pops out of the room, angrily screaming her freaky ex-boyfriend child’s name.

Michael closes the curtain, trying not to worry about all that chaos right now. There’s more than enough to worry about in this room. He goes back over to Eleanor, taking a seat beside her head on the wall-length couch, watching as she barely moves beneath his coat.

Despite his not-girlfriend’s orders, Jason lingers for a moment at Eleanor’s side.

“She looks…dead.” He says, sadly.

“Oh, for fork sake…She is dead, Jason! You all are!” Michael points out, mildly annoyed now.

But the Florida dude shakes his head; “No, dawg. I mean like…real death, y’know. How you see it from the other side? Not as in, afterwards, when you’re the one dead and it’s like ‘oh I’m dead but I’m still here’. I mean when you see it happen to someone else?”

Michael pauses. He feels a lump in his chest as he looks from Eleanor to Jason in confusion.

“I don’t understand.” The demon confesses.

“It’s like this…when you know someone, you see them moving around and smiling and laughing or shouting at their car and you know that’s them, they’re here, and you just expect them to always be doin’ that…But then they die and they’re no longer doing those things…They’re just still. They’re a body and…it’s them but it will never be them again, y’know? It’s just a stupid, boring body…and it don’t make sense why they just can’t get up again…” Jason tries his best to explain, simply.

Either because he doesn’t have the words to say it intelligently, or more likely he’s intentionally explaining it as one would to a child. Or an immortal being still new to the concept of friends.

Michael takes in Jason’s words, letting them sink. A new wave of fear washes over him.

“No, Jason. I’ve never seen that before.” He whispers, shaken to his core.

He’s contemplated the idea of no longer existing. He’s let it drag him into a full-on mid-eternity crisis. Then, after a lot of embarrassing suits and dancing, he’d learned to face it. He’d learned to appreciate how significant it made being alive, if also a little bit sad. Thanks to Eleanor.

But Michael had never truly seen death. Not from the outside. Janets could be rebooted. Demon colleagues reformed. He’d never watched someone loved, watched be so bright and animate, suddenly stop…being. Not forever. He’d never grieved. He’d never truly lost someone to the unknown. To Nothingness.

The closest thing, if not worse, is facing him at this moment.

He fumbles inside the coat for Eleanor’s hand, squeezing it tight.

“I’m gonna find Tahani.” Jason says, surprisingly somber yet resolute.

Michael barely notices him leave. Tears form in his eyes as he gazes down at Eleanor.

“You can’t do that.” He tells her, feelings tangled up inside him; “What he just said about…stopping. Going still and not being…you. That’s bullshirt. Grade A bullshirt! It’s stupid, mortal nonsense and I won’t let it happen, not in my neighborhood, do you hear me?”

He bites his lip, smothering a sob as he strokes her forehead. There’s no reaction on her face. No sign that his words have reached her, wherever she is.

Carefully, he tries snapping his fingers. That always worked before.

He’s not trying to erase any memories. He just wants his Arizona girl back.

“Wake up!”

Snap. Snap.

“Eleanor, c’mon! Wake up, darn it! WAKE UP!”

Snap. Snap. Snap.

*

_There’s something wet on her head. Different from the snow and the ice._

_This water is warm. Salted._

_Something which almost sounds like a fireplace crackles in the distance. Eleanor tries to look around, to find it, only to be met with more blizzard. Finally, after an era passes, the winds suddenly stop. The last snowflakes fall and everything is still and quiet as her grave._

_Eleanor frowns, looking at the sculptures of her friends. She reaches forward to touch Tahani._

_SNAP._

_The sculpture shatters to pieces and Eleanor jumps in fright._

_SNAP._

_Chidi’s statue follows suit, bursting into countless tiny shards of ice._

_SNAP._

_Now Jason. Gone._

_She’s alone again._

_As if they had been there at all. The image of their faces had brought some small, somewhat cruel comfort to her frozen solitude. She doubts she can mold a snowman that would come close to matching any of their likenesses._

_Maybe Jason? It’s not like she doesn’t have all the time in Hell to try._

_“Not sure why you’re so sad. I’d call this a victory.”_

_Oh._

_Oh, fanforkingtastic. She still has the damn Voice to keep her company. Whoop-di-forking-do._

_Eleanor sighs; “Yep, all the best victory parties involve turning into a popsicle. How about you show yourself? Join the fun! That’s if you got the balls.”_

_If she has nothing left to do in her eternal prison, then she can at least taunt her invisible tormenter._

_There’s a crunching of snow beneath a pair of shoes._

_Eleanor turns her head. This time the silhouette moves, eventually parting through the fog, coming into focus. The reveal makes her roll her eyes back._

_“Oh, come on! We’re not doing this anymore.” She tells the Not Michael in front of her; “I’m so sick of this game! You already lost. I know you’re not him.”_

_“Do you?” He, or whatever it is, starts to circle her; “You seemed pretty clingy the last time you saw me?”_

_Eleanor scoffs and shakes her head, along with a wagging finger._

_“No…That was Michael.” She remembers, feeling a tiny spark of warmth in her chest; “…That was Michael who saved me…”_

_“Was it? You sure it wasn’t just another delusion in your forked up little head?” The fake makes a whirling motion with his finger against his temple; “I mean it makes sense, doesn’t it. Months of captivity, sickness, mind forking. No wonder your imagination decided to create a scenario where your guardian demon rides in to rescue you. It’s called a coping mechanism, baby. None if is real. You’re still trapped in that cell with your beloved clown buddies.”_

_Eleanor smirks, folding her arms._

_“Is this the best you got? Trying to convince me I’m still in the Bad Place?” There’s a rather strange irony to it, more so if this was Michael. Which it isn’t._

_She barely feels the cold anymore, though she wishes she had a sweater of some sort._

_“Y’know what’s funny?” Eleanor muses, aloud; “I can understand Vicky not being able to get Michael right. None of those demons really knew him, none where his friends. He grew up, since the beginning of time, being taught that he was beyond the reach of friendship or love. All those demons were. They were told, by some dipshirt, that it was their nature to be evil. What’s that word Chidi used again? Oh right. Indoctrination. Vicky and those other demons don’t understand how Michael could change. Why he would change. Probably because they never got as lucky as he did.”_

_“You mean as ‘I’ did.” Her companion sneers._

_“Oh, don’t worry, we’ll get to you in time.” Eleanor promises, rather upbeat; “But you’re right. Michael got lucky. He found friends. Friends who inspired him, who believed he could change. Just like I did. Huh. Maybe I am a demon? That’d be cool! I’d be some sort of fiery temptress demon with amazing horns and four sexy eyes…Not sure where that came from, to be honest, I’ll blame the insanity.”_

_“Are you close to making a point?”_

_“Yes!” She remembers where she was going with this; “See…the demons couldn’t impersonate Michael properly. They could copy his skin, mimic his voice…But y’know what they couldn’t get down right? His eyes. I spent three hundred years seeing those eyes change and evolve into what they are now. How is a demon who has never known kindness or love supposed to know how to copy eyes like his?”_

_Those similar eyes don’t look at her with kindness now. Even the contempt and resentment is nothing like that which the old Michael, the Michael from all those previous reboots, showed towards her._

_“It makes sense why they couldn’t get it right. And how I was able to tell it was the real Michael, my Michael, when he came on stage to rescue me.” She reveals, daring to step closer to her opponent; “But you? You’re just a figment of my wacko head having a freak out. If anyone should know how to impersonate Michael…it should be me.”_

_And the pieces start to fall into place. She feels a weight lifted off her when it becomes clear. It may have taken a while to figure out but, once again, she did it._

_“Except…even I’m not that cruel to myself.” She says, a glint in her eye; “Am I?”_

_The image of Not Michael produces a snigger. They’ve been figured out. It almost manages to capture the same evil laugh that her Michael had given the first time she rumbled his plans._

_A swirl of wind and ice forms around him, shifting the image around like a jigsaw._

_When it falls away, Eleanor finds herself looking at an all too familiar sight._

_“Ah. Well aren’t you one hot looking cliché.” She smiles._

_Another Eleanor smirks, coldly, back at her. This one is fortunate enough to be properly dressed, though hardly suitable for the snow. Her gray sweater gives her slightly more warmth than her own prison-chic shift but the sunglasses seem rather redundant._

_It’s the outfit she wore the day she died. Ugh, was she buried in it as well? Or was her body too splattered for open casket?_

_“So let me guess. You’re…Dark Eleanor?” she assumes; “Evil Twin? Edgelordeanor?”_

_“I’m you, dumbass. I’m the real Eleanor Shellstrop!” The other one snaps._

_“Cool. I’m gonna call you Edgy.” Eleanor teases, “And now we’re on first name bases, how about you tell me what the fork you’re doing messing with my – sorry, our – own head?”_

_“I’m here to remind you of what you could have been. What we could have been.”_

_Eleanor frowns; “…The sexier Olsen twins?”_

_“No! Well, yeah, but…More than that.” Edgy mutters; “I know how badly you’ve been trying to fun away from me all these years. Trying to forget who you were, where you came from. You think yourself so self-righteous now. The Savior of Humanity. You try and deny it but you’re the only one giving yourself that title, bench.”_

_A title she had spurned in a moment of self-doubt. She never asked to be a leader or a hero of any sort. It was just easier to take chance rather than have to listen to the little voice in her head complaining about the way things were. She may as well change them herself._

_“At least I’m doing something with my not-life. If I just stayed as you then I’d still be trapped, being mentally tortured, in the Bad Place.”_

_“Dude, we could have been running that place in a week, had I been in charge!” Edgy claims._

_“Right. Because being the hot, female version of Shawn is so appealing.” Eleanor rolls her eyes._

_Did she really used to be such a scum bag that the idea of becoming Queen of Hell was appealing to her?_

_“You don’t get it, do you?” Edgy Eleanor starts to move around her like a cat facing an intruder on her patch; “I’m you before all of this garbage! I’m the you who was strong enough to survive thirty-six years of bullshirt and still come out flipping the bird. I’m you before all the reboots, all the brain wiping, all the so-called friends softening you up, making you weak.”_

_“Oh, right! You’re the me who was so self-absorbed that she didn’t notice the shopping carts about to shove her ash into the road to get flattened by a Viagra-selling truck!”_

_It doesn’t exactly make the real Eleanor go green with envy at her past self._

_“How else was a wreck like me supposed to go out than in an actual wreck?” Edgy shrugs, not giving a crap._

_The real Eleanor smiles; “Except that’s not how I died. It’s how you died, babe, not me. I got my ash saved by someone who loves me. Someone who thought I deserved a second chance and risked everything he had to make sure me and my friends got to live that chance.”_

_Her not-twin raises an eyebrow._

_“You’re still dead.”_

_“I know that! The point is, I didn’t die alone! I got to live a couple extra, amazing years, with people I didn’t know were already my best friends. And when I did die, we died together – in a pretty badass and mind-melting way to go.” She points out; “Yeah, I might have originally died the same as you. Just some loud-mouthed, Margherita swigging, cold-hearted bench. But for me that wasn’t death. If anything, that’s when my life started. It’s the day I met Michael…it’s the day I met my friends.”_

_There’s that salty water dripping on her head again. She wipes it off, carelessly._

_Edgy Eleanor continues to stare at her as if she’s talking a different language. She recognizes that expression. She used to give that to anyone who tried to tell her when she was doing something wrong, something mean, something reckless. She knew they were right but she sure wasn’t going to show that to them._

_“And what good have those friends really done for you? Hmm? I would never have let my guard down for anyone to give them the chance to fork with me like what happened to you.” She snarls at her; “And there’s no way any demoness bench would have been able to break me by pretending to be some satanic sugar daddy. Or by making me weep over my nerdy ex. Seriously, girl, you used to have standards!”_

_Eleanor starts to laugh, doubling over._

_“What is it?” Edgy asks, frowning._

_She struggles to explain it. She wants to tell her old self just how hilarious it is to hear her talk this way. To hear how hard she used to try to shut herself off and curse the very idea of someone caring for her._

_When she fails to explain it, Edgy clenches her fist._

_“Hey! Shut the fork up!”_

_Eleanor covers her mouth; “M’sorry, I just-.”_

_Her old self launches at her and starts punching her into the snow. It’s a rather pathetic barrage of fists and hair grabbing. As if Eleanor were being attacked by an oversized three-year-old. It’s not even worth defending herself. After all the agony she’s endured, this is nothing. At first, she laughs even more. This is the peak of all the ridiculous things she’s encountered in her afterlives._

_Then Edgy Eleanor screams and the salt-water falls onto her face again._

_“Stop. Laughing! STOP IT, BENCH!”_

_Eleanor freezes, staring up at herself._

_Her other self is like a tiger released from a cage. There’s so much rage, so much anger and hurt, in those eyes. Eleanor had forgotten how she used to look like that. Often, she could hide it behind a snarky grin or a badass pose on her Instagram pics. But then there were times she would catch her reflection in the mirror after a fallout with her friends or a bad boyfriend cheating on her…_

_God. She had forgotten how much pain she had to cover up with greed and junk food and not giving a crap about anyone except Eleanor Shellstrop._

_She’d forgotten just how…tiring it was._

_Her twin continues to attack her, weakly, even as her face crumbles and the tears fall._

_Eleanor carefully sits up and pulls her old self in, close to her chest, wrapping her arms around her until she stops fighting._

_“I’m sorry, dude.” She whispers, embracing herself tight; “I’m sorry I hid you away. I should never have been ashamed of you. You’re right. You’re the most important part of me…You’re the survivor. I would never have got far enough to die the first time I did without you.”_

_She feels a rush of calm and peace move through her as she holds onto her old self. Another few drops of water fall onto her head._

_“Where the fork is that rain coming from?”_

*

Time has never felt more real until now. It’s painfully linear and slow.

Michael watches and waits for any sign of change. Eleanor continues to give out tiny, short breaths. Her skin is ice cold. Sometimes it seems as though she’s not moving at all. That’s when Michael starts to panic. Is this what Jason was describing? Is this what it’s like watching someone you love die?

He can’t even take any comfort in the image of her looking as though she’s sleeping peacefully. She’s not. Her eyes are still open, rolled back to show their whites, mouth parted and arms limp. Is this what a…corpse looks like up close? He’s only ever seen them in simulations of torture and the memories of humans.

The worst part is her aura. Usually, it's as vibrant and multicoloured as the stripes on her favourite shirts. Now it's dimmed. Translucent.

He hates it. If this is what humans have to go through than screw that!

Why won’t she wake up? Why isn’t Janet’s cure working?

He touches Eleanor’s hair; “If you don’t wake up…We won’t be friends anymore. Got it? I won’t win you another ugly toy. You won’t get to watch me get another strike. We won’t…get to sing Sweet, Caroline…We won’t finish that movie with the bipolar ice witch. We won’t get to hang out and laugh with the others…Are these threats working at all?”

If anything, they are probably creating more self-inflicted wounds for Michael.

Tears fall from his eyes and onto her brow. She still doesn’t wake, not even to yell at him.

“I did this to you. I made the thing that’s killing you…again.” He whispers, crumbling; “I lied to you and I let you down…They hurt you to hurt me…Oh, Eleanor…I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I did to you…all those years…I’m sorry I couldn’t make up for it!”

Michael removes the trench coat blanketing her and instead gathers her limp body into his arms. He knows he’s warmer than any fabric. He’s never truly felt what cold is like until holding Eleanor now. It’s as if the fire inside of her that drew him in like a moth is gone.

He clutches her to his chest, fingers wrapped in her hair.

“I just wanted to save you. I wanted to save you.” He sobs, “Eleanor, I’m sorry…”

*

_The snow is beginning to thaw beneath them._

_A door opens nearby._

_Eleanor looks up from where she’s sat with her other self in her arms. Since when had there been a door in this barren Winter void?_

_There’s the sound of footsteps._

_A friendly smile finds her._

_“Eleanor! Come on!” Janet appears in the doorway, holding out her hand._

_Real Eleanor rises to her feet. She dares to let her heart pound with hope that this nightmare is finally coming to an end. Janet has never looked more gorgeous than she does at this moment._

_She goes to run to her._

_A hand grabs her elbow, stopping her. Her feet almost slip on the damp floor._

_Her old self stares at her with red, tired eyes; “How do you know you can trust them? Everyone we ever met, even our own waste of space parents, used us and tossed us aside like trash. How do you know they won’t do the same?”_

_Eleanor hesitates. She glances back at Janet. True, she had trusted who she thought was Janet to care for her, only to be stabbed and poisoned by a fake. True, she had trusted Michael when she first came to the fake Good Place, only for him to reveal himself as her tormentor. True, she had fallen in love with Chidi only to get her heart broken again._

_There were no guarantees. Even she could get it wrong, sometimes._

_“I don’t. I don’t know anything for sure.” She shrugs, being brutally honest with herself; “All I know is that…I love them. They’ve given me reason to love them and shown they loved me. And it’s worth trying to see if that love is real. If it’s not, well, sucks! But if it’s true? It’s forking fantastic.”_

_It suddenly becomes clear to her why she can tell she’s no longer in the Bad Place. The filter has been there all this time and yet only then did she really notice it._

_“This is the Medium Place.” She says to herself, relieved; “They got us back safe.”_

_Her other self lets go and Eleanor turns again. She takes a couple steps towards Janet before turning around again._

_She regards her old self. Trashy. Hard. Alone._

_…Tough as nails._

_“Come on.” She reaches for Edgy Eleanor’s hand._

_“What the fork?” Edgy replies._

_“Come with me! You were just saying what a badass you are, who we were. You set me up to be who I am now. I’m not running from you anymore. You’re a part of me. You’re…my own, personal Fire Squid.”_

_Edgy blinks and shakes her head; “Wow, I talk some shirt in the future!”_

_The two of them both laugh and Edgy Eleanor steps forward, carefully reaching out, putting her hand in Real Eleanor’s. She grips it tight, like finding a long-lost sister._

_Eleanor keeps a hold of herself as she turns and runs towards Janet._

*

Her eyes open.

The cold is gone. She’s warm, almost too warm. She’s being held, wrapped in someone’s arms, someone who probably shouldn’t be this hot if they were human. Which means they’re not.

Her body aches all over, still scarred with severe trauma. She feels thin. Starving.

It’s also likely she’s in dire need of a bath.

But at least she’s warm. And she’s not alone. Someone is holding her tight, rocking her, soaking her shoulder with their tears.

“I’m sorry. Eleanor, I’m sorry.”

She smiles, riding the euphoria of escaping eternal insanity. Of waking with an understanding of herself and her friends better than she ever could before.

Like the one crying his demonic heart out to her now.

“I’m not letting you go until you wake up…I can’t lose you now. The only reason I care about anything…the only reason I have a heart to break…is you. It's your fault.” Michael whispers, distraught. “I need you.”

He squeezes her and it hurts, just a little, pressing against where his impostor had kicked her ribs. It’s easy to ignore and worth this most touching of wake-up calls.

“I love you.” Says the demon.

It takes her newfound breath away. A part of her had been waiting for him to get the words out. Eleanor manages to raise her hand up and stroke his white hair;

“…’Love you too, buddy.”

She feels him react, tensing at first, before he pulls back from the embrace.

He looks at her, his glasses nearly steamed up from his tears, looking like he spent nearly as much time in Hell as she did. He stares at her, trying to work out if she’s real, before touching her face.

“Eleanor?!”

She smiles, a tear sliding down, then nods; “Uh-huh…Dead and kicking.”

Michael laughs, still half-crying, staring at her as if she had just fallen from the real Good Place. He keeps touching her face, her hair, her arms, as if checking she is all in one piece. Then he’s hugging her tight again, kissing her hair, her forehead, her nose, her cheeks, until she’s bursting into laughter again.

“Oh wow, dude! What happened to kissing being gross?” She teases, secretly loving him being all soppy.

Michael tuts; “No more disgusting than all the human fluids you’ve been leaking since you got sick. Let me have this.”

She smiles again, unable to complain as he lays another kiss on her forehead before wrapping her up in another hug. She holds onto him, still feeling rather weak, not quite ready to face up to the months of physical and mental torture she had to go through. All she wants right now is to know that she’s safe, that she’s back with those she loves around her.

It’s barely a minute later that Tahani, Jason and Janet (and Derek for some reason) come to find them. Tahani practically squeals with joy before throwing herself in to hug Eleanor, with Janet and Jason soon following. A frazzled looking Derek attempts to join in only for Janet to send him to his void.

Eleanor sighs as she rests in the group embrace, surrounded by her found family – minus Chidi.

The tiny, bitchy part of her from her previous life is confronted with the truth. This is far from lame.


	6. Part Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Final Chapter. Some wounds need more Bearimy's to heal.

Eleanor had no idea just how tiring a brief coma could be. Even once the virus has left her system, Janet giving her the all clear, she feels as though her body has just been through a meat grinder. To be fair, there was a chance it had been, there were far too many lapses in her memory from her time in the Bad Place. She has no idea what they chose to restore and take away. Janet assures her, after an examination, that it’s highly unlikely spiders were involved in her nether regions.

It sucked that after everything that had happened over the past few days, or several months depending on where you where in Jeremy Bearimy, she was still run down and confined to a horizontal position.

At least now there was an upside. She was no longer contagious. So long, quarantine!

Tahani insists that she stay at her mansion. Eleanor doubted that Mindy would mind them still crashing at hers but, given how Derek burned his circuits out in more ways than one while trying to keep control of the neighborhood, it didn’t seem the most stable environment to rest up. Also, staying at Tahani’s made it feel more like getting to rest up at a fancy spa. Not something that had appealed to Eleanor too much before, but after being dragged to Hell and back, she welcomes the opportunity to be pampered like a princess. Or, rather, a princess’ favorite housecat.

When she’d first woken up at the train station, once the group hug was over, she’d been more than confused by the smell of burning yoghurt. She then had to be filled in on what had happened while she had gone away, how Derek had struggled to keep control of his and Janet’s ‘children’. With a lot of tweaking and some rather gory details Eleanor didn’t need to know, Janet managed to sort out the mess in time before the four humans could see any of it.

All in all, Eleanor could have woken up to worse news.

“I can’t believe you managed to get all the humans away before everything went to shirt. Damn, girl, you really are a Queen when you need to be.” Eleanor praises her friend as they relax on a couple of lush, cream couches.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I mean I may have technically been fifty sixth in line to the throne but, hardly!” Tahani humbles herself as best she is able; “Honestly, Eleanor, I must have had about three separate breakdowns while you were gone! I never realized before just how hard it is what you and Michael and Janet do. What am I good for? Throwing parties! How can that save humanity?”

“But it did, babe!” Eleanor tells her; “You planned the perfect getaway and played the perfect hostess to get Chidi and the others away. You did save humanity. Give yourself a break, you did all that on your own. I had a freak out and I still had all my friends around me.”

She adjusts the faux-fur blanket draped over her lower half. Her temperature is still rather low and she’s constantly seeking covers or drinks or a hug to keep her warm.

“We were hardly that supportive though, were we. Mostly thanks to that sneaky Bad Janet. I wish you had marbleized that obnoxious cow.” Tahani scowls, sipping her iced tea. She looks over at Eleanor; “Do you have enough water, darling? Do you need any more blankets?”

She knows what her friend is doing is more than simple fussing.

“Please, stop apologizing. I think I had counted seventy sorries from Michael when he woke me up.” She shakes her head, the pulses weaker now; “You guys have nothing to be sorry for. I’m the one who didn’t trust you all to take care of me and let you know I was sick when this all started. Not that it would’ve mattered, with Bad Janet playing nurse bench.”

Tahani sighs, sitting up and petting out her dress; “I simply couldn’t stop worrying about you all while you were gone. Every time I had to talk to Chidi, even though he doesn’t remember, all I could think of was you and it just…”

Eleanor reaches across and takes her hand, giving it a squeeze. She relishes the contact with another human. For months, the only ones that had touched her had been demons or Janets, not always in the most pleasant ways. She understood what it meant to be starved of affection.

“He asked about you before we left to come back to the town.” Tahani explains; “He was very curious to know when you would be coming back. I think he missed you.”

That makes her want to cry again.

She doesn’t know how to respond to that. She misses Chidi too, more than he could possibly imagine. On the other hand, she’d already been updated on how the humans had interacted during their retreat and Eleanor’s absence. She knew that Chidi and Simone were spending more and more time together. It didn’t weigh too heavily on her heart, for now. It had been so long since she’d seen him and with so much terror keeping her occupied.

Part of her feared that, the moment she got back to work and saw Chidi again, she would fall apart. Whenever those foundations would rumble, she’d reach inside herself to find that badass Eleanor again. The survivor who had made it through a life of neglect and heartbreak. The bench who had survived Hell itself. She needed her now, more than ever. A little bit of darkness to protect the light.

“Oh and, this one night in the hot tub, I managed to have this hilarious talk with John! It turns out he found out some goss’ on Kim and Kanye that you would never believe! It all involves a bar fight, two tigers and a loofah!”

“Spill it, girl, I’m all ears!” Eleanor welcomes the distraction, turning on her side to listen in.

*  
  
  


The rest of the gang come to visit her every evening. Her friends try not to talk shop too much around her, promising to let her know anything vitally important, wanting her to get a true break. When Michael and Janet assure her that the experiment is going ‘well’, Eleanor knows to trust them and take a breath. Not to worry. She’s earned this respite.

When she’s not binging Netflix reality shows or chatting with Tahani, she spends most of the time sleeping. Janet recommends it’s the best way to let her body heal from the trauma, along with the medicine she’s given. Janet, thankfully, understands and respects Eleanor when she says she’d rather not have her pills mixed in with her food or water. She feels bad, knowing her Janet would never truly poison her. It’s just an unfortunate reflex.

Sleeping is another issue. Most of the time, her brain is too wiped out to even conjure up a dream, and she gets to wake with nothing but the delight of a proper rest. There’s always sunlight through the windows and birds singing the tunes of what she swears are nineties pop ballads. She wakes sore and chilly, but peaceful. Safe.

Then there are the other nights. Nights when her brain tosses and turns with the scattered memories of her time in the Bad Place. Memories of the horrors she created in her own head, thanks to the virus.

When those resurface, she gets to wake in a cold sweat, blankets tangled around her legs. The sunlight or moonlight is no comfort. Instead, it feels all too bright. Unreal. Often, she wakes gasping, barely making a sound. And she’s alone. She’s forced to sit and get a hold of herself, remind herself that none of it is real, that it’s over. A couple of other times she’s clearly made enough noise to wake Tahani, who is there at her side, those Bambi-like eyes wide with concern. She’s comforted then, held tight and taking succor in the most perfect hugs in existence.

Tahani is an angel. But there are places angels would never dare to tread. Eleanor’s mind should be one of them. That’s why she never tells Tahani about her dreams. She cries herself out, letting those long arms wrap her up, and then makes up an excuse about not remembering what her nightmare even was. It’s believable enough, it’s what happens to normal people. People who haven’t gone to Hell and somehow made it out.

Who could understand what that was like?

She’d thought Janet might understand. They had both been kidnapped, after all. Then the not-robot had explained, when Tahani had asked her how she was, that attempts to torture her in the Bad Place were rather pointless. She couldn’t feel physical pain. All they could do was stick her in a magnet jail and attempt to use the Michael suit to make her think he had betrayed her. Just like Eleanor, it had never worked. Janet became more of a test for Vicky to practice being Michael. Her ‘torture’ sounded more annoying than what Eleanor had gone through. She hid her envy behind her laughter as Janet mocked Vicky’s terrible attempts at impersonating Michael.

Eleanor can only try to find distractions from allowing her thoughts to wonder back to the Bad Place. She tries to get through as many books shared with Chidi’s library, imagining him as the one reading them to her. Enlightening as they are, it’s not quite as appealing without him here, her sexy teacher. She helps Tahani plan events for the neighborhood, all the while staying confined to her spot on the sofa. Jason visits to play video games with her and play stupid games that shouldn’t be done sober. One involving a golf ball, peanut butter and a sling shot almost ends up shattering one of Tahani’s vases.

Michael comes around less often than she would like. But she understands. He’s gone from boss to assistant to back to the man in charge. When she does see him for updates on the experiment, she can see from the twinkle in his eyes how much he is enjoying being the Architect again, this time in a true Good – or close enough – Place than the twisted mindfork of a neighborhood he ran before. When he asks how she is, which he always does, she tells him she’s fine. Half a lie. She doesn’t want to distract him.

_He worries. They all worry. Because they love you, idiot._

The Voice is as forthright with her as ever. At least now her reminders are more encouraging than insulting. She is grateful for them. She can’t wait for when she has her energy back and she can do something amazing to thank them all. She considers Jason’s present first. How about an actual Pikachu instead of just a balloon?

*

One evening she’s curled up on the sofa, as usual, almost a fifth of the way through _What We Owe To Each Other_. She is managing to walk again now, the strength starting to return to her legs, but she still has very little stamina. Her head has been heavier today, indistinguishable whispers cutting at her skull. She’s waiting for Tahani to come home so they can have some hot chocolate with Bailey’s. It always feels worse when she’s without her friends.

It’s a pleasant surprise then when Tahani doesn’t return alone.

“Look who decided to follow me home.” She smiles at Eleanor as she walks through the door, taking off her shawl.

Michael, Janet and Jason follow in behind her. Michael is carrying three boxes of pizza while Jason seems to be lugging a crate of ice cream with him.

Not frozen yoghurt? Actual ice cream?

“The experiment is going well, most of the humans seem to be improving, with one or two hiccups.” Michael explains.

“Are they all Brent?” Eleanor asks.

“No, I mean Simone pretended to hiccup while Brent was playing tennis and it put him off.”

“But then the four of them decided to go for dinner and, yours truly being the waitress, watched them all argue over who would pay the bill. It was almost cute!” Janet continued.

Eleanor nodded, imagining that. She didn’t want to point out that paying was probably more of an ego thing for Brent. Or, if she gave him the benefit of the doubt, a bit of both.

She’s about to ask why they needed to pay the bill when everything in this place is free before Jason cuts her off.

“As everything’s going so awesome, we thought, how about a slumber party?” He suggests, beaming.

Eleanor winces, just a moment, struggling to keep her smile on. The trigger cuts her deep in a way she wouldn’t have predicted. Jason would have had no idea.

Michael sees it. He’s the only one who knows.

“You okay?” he asks, as subtle as he can.

Eleanor nods, “Yeah sure! Great idea. I’ve missed us all being together.”

That isn’t a lie. It’s been nice having them all here individually. But it feels like an eternity since they all hung out together, as friends.

“Janet, is it safe for me to have a real drink yet?” she asks.

“I’ve looked at your vitals and can confirm,” She hands her a margherita; “No harm in one or two.”

“Okay, now it’s a party.”

They dish out the pizzas, each with their own favoriting topping including chocolate for Jason and salted dark matter for Michael, while they tell Eleanor about what has been happening in the neighborhood. The workplace banter eventually turns to more light-hearted topics, Jason showing off the first dance routine he invented himself and Janet attempting to copy it.

For a white not-lady she has a surprising amount of rhythm.

More ice cream is eventually consumed than the four of them, sans Janet, should be able to. Eleanor is surprised by how tired she doesn’t feel, for the first night in a while. She barely even misses Chidi that much. She’s surrounded by enough love with the friends she has that she’s content to lay back and bask in it while they play a far less terrifying game of magic Pictionary with Janet than what they tried with the residents the other night.

They end the night with a game of ‘Who Am I’, sticking post it notes on each other’s foreheads with a famous name.

Jason figures his out in record time.

"Am I Blake Bortles?"

"Yes."

“BORTLES!”

It wasn’t as if they could pick anyone else for him. It’s probably the first game of riddles that Jason has ever been the first to win, besides the one time he foiled Michael’s reboot.

Tahani takes ten questions, asking if she is beautiful and charitable and iconic, which Eleanor tells her yes, of course, but they are supposed to be playing a game. Thankfully, the same is true for her name. And she manages to correctly guess Princess Diana. Janet doesn’t quite understand the point of the game and works out she’s Stephen Hawking in a single question. They drunkenly applaud her anyway.

“Am I…human?” Michael asks when it’s his turn.

“Er, no.” Eleanor giggles with the others as they lay about Tahani’s living room, the two women laid across the sofa, Jason cross-legged on the floor with Janet sat behind him and Michael in his own chair that’s rather small for him.

“Am I Santa Claus?”

Is he not human? Is he even real?

“Yes!” Jason answers.

“No!” Eleanor rebukes.

“A little!” Tahani shouts over them.

Eventually he realizes, with a hint of light disdain, he’s the Grinch. He makes a face as he screws up his post-it note before throwing it at Eleanor as she laughs with the others.

It’s her turn now.

“Am I hot?” Has to be her first question.

“Definitely!”

“Am I famous?”

“Nope! Well, not on Earth.”

“Am I a superhero?”

“Yes!”

“Can I hold my drink?”

They shake their head; “Not as well as you think.” Michael says with a raised eyebrow.

She frowns at that.

“Guys, did you just write my own name?” She asks, seeing how badly they are able to keep it in; “Am I just me?”

They all cheer as she gets it. She laughs, tossing the paper ball across at Michael and finishing her drink. Her friends are ridiculous. Hot and tipsy, sure, she wore those labels like identity bracelets. But a superhero? She can’t say she had felt like that lately. This moment right now, sat with most of those she loved most, was the closest she had felt to true joy since she’d said goodbye to Chidi. And, still, something felt out of place. Like it didn’t belong.

It wasn’t the first time she’d had such a sensation. And she knew the answer, as before, was her.

When the food finally runs out, everyone seems to crash at once. Jason falls asleep with his head in Janet’s lap as she seems to go ‘offline’, closing her eyes and folding her hands over him. Tahani and Eleanor collapse against their pillows while Michael continues to sit in the corner. Somewhere outside an owl hoots to add to the ambience, but all else is still.

*

Eleanor grunts and writhes as they manhandle her towards the train station. She tries to scream but a hand is clamped over her mouth, muffling any attempt at alerting her friends. Her legs are still too weak, barely used, to be able to kick or trip her kidnappers. It’s unlikely she could even run away if she managed to escape their grasp.

The sight of the jet-black steam train causes her thrash in terror. Their literal claws dig into her arms, threatening to tear them off, before a warm hand slides around her neck.

“Miss me, sweetie? I’m sorry our playtime together had to be put on hold. But I had a lot of time to think up some fun new tortures while I was reforming.” Vicky says, the pressure on Eleanor’s neck getting stronger, “I really do need to thank you for that whole exploding thing, don’t I? We’re going to have so much fun.”

She shudders and tries in vain to cry out again as Vicky’s fingers clutch at her nape. The demon’s smoky eyes glare into her soul.

“Did you really start to think you could ever leave us? That you could belong anywhere else? Oh, Eleanor. You’re ours. I guess we’re going to have to reset that little head of yours again.” Her gaze hardens as she strokes her cheek; “Go right back to the beginning, where all you’ll know is fear and pain.”

“Please…Please, don’t…” She starts to beg, voice muffled by the meaty hand over her mouth.

Vicky grins at her struggle. She makes a zip motion and slips the Michael suit back on.

Eleanor whimpers, twisting away, not wanting to look at it again. Tears roll, helplessly, down her face as she hates what they’ve done to her.

“No, no, don’t! I can’t! Not again!” She sounds so pathetic. She wasn’t supposed to be like this! She thought she’d found that inner strength. She was a survivor. How could everything just fall apart? How could they take her away from her friends again?

Vicky in the Michael suit clicks her tongue in disapproval as she leans in closer. Eleanor knows those eyes aren’t his. She knows this isn’t her friend.

But it doesn’t stop it from hurting.

“Please…stop…Let me go…” Her words are not what she wants to say. They’re not things Eleanor Shellstrop would let out in a crisis.

Maybe she’s not that person anymore. Maybe she is broken.

“You won’t escape us again, dummy. We’re gonna take you where no one will find you. They won’t even know where to look!” Not Michael taunts, his face too close for comfort; “Oh, the things I have planned to do to you in this suit. Even if you never believe I’m Michael, a few weeks in, you’ll prefer to burn than look at this face again.”

Not Michael makes a gesture with his hand. Eleanor tries one final attempt to wriggle free, before her hands are clamped behind her back and her hair yanked to one side. A needle is plunged into her neck, fear crushing her heart as she knows what it is. The demons holding her are huge, strong and large, meaning she’s nothing but a Barbie doll in their grip.

As the virus floods her system again, she falls to her knees in submission before her captor.

“There we are. It won’t take long to get things back to how they should be.” Not Michael strokes her hair, curling a strand around his fingers; “You tried to fool your friends into thinking you were back to normal. But I know you. I can see what you’ve become, what you’ll always be. My broken little toy.”

Every part of her goes numb, her jaw slack, the fight drained out. She’s tried. She’s lost.

*

She wakes to the cold, crisp air against her skin and grass beneath her bare feet. It’s dark outside but the stars are out, as usual, along with a moon that’s always full. Her heart is pounding, shoulders jolting with upset, tears falling down her cheeks as she slowly returns to consciousness. That’s if this is reality.

Is she really doubting? That dream had felt so real. More than any of the others. Almost more real than the evening she had spent having fun with her friends.

“Eleanor…”

At first, she ignores the voice. It feels so distant, it may as well be an echo of the fake Michael in her nightmare.

If she believes that it’s there, then it means there is a chance her delusions and reality have mixed up together like spilled paint. How will she ever be able to tell them apart?

“Eleanor, are you awake?” Michael asks from behind her.

Good question.

There’s concern etched in his tone. It doesn’t sound like Vicky doing an impression. There’s always a slim chance her acting could have improved. What if she’s reformed quicker than they thought possible? What if Shawn sent someone else in the suit?

What if…

“I-Is this…the Bad Place?”

Michael doesn’t respond instantly. It’s probably an all too familiar question for him.

“What?”

“Is this the Bad Place?” She asks again, still terribly shaken.

Her mind has been so messed up, sent through different dimensions and realities and timelines. Now, in her most vulnerable state, she feels as though they are folding in on each other. It’s like she’s tiptoeing on the edge of the Time Knife.

The best torture that the demons could conjure up for her would be giving her false hope that she was safe only to pull the rug out from beneath her.

“No.” Michael tells her, “No. You’re okay, Eleanor. You’re safe.”

He’d said those words to her once before. The first lies he told her of far too many to count.

“You’re in the Medium Place,” he says, different to what he’d told her on their first meeting; “You’re with your friends. They’re all still asleep at Tahani’s.”

Eleanor steadies her breath; “Why aren’t you?”

“Demon, remember. We tend not to sleep. Well, unless we’re upside down.”

She feels her resolve shake again. Part of her is afraid to turn around. She wants so much for it to really be Michael. She fears that if she turns and looks at it him, she’ll know it to be fake.

Instead, he steps closer, carefully placing one of Tahani’s knitted shawls around her shoulders.

“It’s too cold for you out here. Let’s get you get back inside.” He tries to gently guide her off the large grassy lawn between Tahani’s house and the outskirts of town.

Eleanor refuses, still snuffling.

“N-no…Not yet…” She leans back against Michael’s hands and finally meets his eyes. When she’s assured herself it’s him, she sighs; “Stay with me for a bit?”

He nods and leads her to a nearby bench, sitting her down and wrapping the shawl around her. He’s quiet as she struggles to get her emotions under control. She leans against his chest as he draws her close to him, his hands on her.

Michael sighs; “You’re not okay.”

Eleanor shakes her head, sitting up; “I thought I was. I thought I’d…found the part of myself I needed to get over this. Turned out to be another forked up hallucination.”

“Or maybe this isn’t something that can be sorted out with a quick fix.” Michael says what she already knows.

“You’re not helping, y’know.” She brushes her nose with her hand.

“Sorry. I’ve been checking in on how you’re doing as much as I could. I know how important this experiment is to you. But I haven’t stopped worrying about you.” He confesses, softly; “I don’t know another human who has been through what you have. No one has ever gone to the real Bad Place, suffered torment, and then come out the other side mentally intact.”

Eleanor gives a sad smile; “That might still be true.”

For some reason, Michael is the only one she feels comfortable revealing how fragile her mental state is.

“I thought that, once I was free, everything would be all right. That it would all be over.” She confesses, “Now I’m here and…it’s great. It’s warm and bright and you guys are all…here. But it’s still cold. It’s…uncertain. Hard…And I worry I won’t ever be ready to get back to it. I worry that…there was no point bringing me back…W-what if I’ll never be certain I left?”

Michael just listens. He probably doesn’t know what to say. As he just mentioned, no one has ever suffered torture in the Bad Place to then have a chance to recover. Even demons. He escaped, yes, but to him it was home. A screwed up, dysfunctional, loveless home – but home.

“I close my eyes and I’m still there. I dream that Vicky is going to find me. Sometimes I see you, out the corner of my eye, and I feel guilty because I’m not sure if you’re…” She covers her mouth as she starts crying again.

Michael reaches to touch her hair and tries to pull her in for another hug.

“It’s okay…” he whispers.

Eleanor lets herself fall into him once more, taking comfort in the warmth which had saved her from her icy locked-in syndrome. She sniffles into his shirt.

“It’s not okay.”

“I know,” Michael says, holding her; “But it will be. I know how to make everything better.”

He holds up his hand. Eleanor opens her eyes to see his thumb and middle finger pressed together.

She pushes away from him, violently.

“Dude, what the fork are you doing?!” Eleanor glowers at him.

Michael just looks confused.

“I was going to erase your memory. Take you back to before you got sick at Mindy’s.” He explains, simply, clearly not having a clue why she’s reacting this way; “All of this; getting the virus, going to the Bad Place, the torture and nightmares…It’ll be like it never existed.”

“Why would you do that?!” Eleanor asks, appalled.

Michael puts his hand down; “Because…you’re in pain. You’ll always be in pain from this, Eleanor. Janet says it’s not something you’re likely to forget yourself. I don’t want you to be hurting this badly. If I erase your memories, take you back, you’ll be okay. Like with how I wiped Chidi’s mind so he wouldn’t be bothered by Simone being here. Isn’t that good?”

Sometimes Michael could be so stupid that he made Jason look like an Oxford professor.

Eleanor stares at him. She can see from the affection and grief in his eyes that he’s not being malicious. He honestly believes that he was ready to do something for her that would be for her own good. It makes it so much harder to be mad at Michael when he’s not actually trying to be bad.

“No, dude…You don’t get it.” She tells him, “You can’t just mess with someone’s memories like that. There’s so much forked up with it like…consent and autonomy, yada yada. Ugh, this is where Chidi would come in useful! Basically, man, you can’t just screw with someone’s mind against their will. Even if you think it’ll help them, it’s wrong. Don’t you think I’ve had enough demons forking with my head already?!”

Michael reels a little, looking very guilty.

“Oh, boy. I screwed up again, didn’t I.” He says, regretfully; “M’sorry, I…I promised you I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you again…”

His face crumples up in anguish.

And now Eleanor feels like she kicked a four-headed puppy spider.

“Hey, hey, bud,” She shuffles closer again and takes his hands, now wondering if she overreacted.

No. No, she didn’t. But she can’t stay mad at Michael.

“I get why you think that would help me, in your own messed up, demonic head-sponge.” She says with a smile, squeezing his hands; “Neither of us are done screwing up and learning new things. But whatever is going on in my head, I need to sort out myself. No matter how long it takes, I can’t just cut that slice of my not-life out and throw it away like a bad piece of cake.”

Michael looks at her and then gives a rather sad shrug; “Really? I sometimes wish I could. I’d love for someone to erase all the terrible things I did in the Bad Place…and to you guys.”

“Yeah, but then you wouldn’t be the Michael you are now.” She finds herself comforting him; “We love you because of how far you’ve come and how much you’ve changed.”

“…You liked me when you first met me and you didn’t think I was a demon.”

“I thought you were an angel who sucked at his job. I wasn’t too far off.” She confesses; “But yeah, it’s true…I liked you, even if you didn’t really like us back. I saw something in you that I thought was worth getting close to. I mean…if you get the chance to be friends with some heavenly god-like silver fox, only an idiot would turn down that chance.”

She can still remember the pride in his eyes that he’d shown her whenever he talked about how special she was, how happy he was to have her there. She remembered how much it hurt to see him look betrayed by her, disappointed whenever she lied or tried to run away. She remembers how fun it had been to spend time with him, showing him how to relax and chill out. She’d wanted those feelings, that bond, to be real, right from the start.

“And listen…These memories I’ve got now…from the last several months or whatever,” Eleanor continues; “They’re not all bad. Stuff like…you taking care of me, rescuing me, getting to blow that demon skank into gooy smithereens…The words you said to me at the train station…It would really suck if I forgot all of that.”

Michael frowns; “Even with all the torture?”

She nods. It must sound preposterous. She knows it’s crazy, but it was those fleeting, warm and sweet memories that softened all the beatings and isolation. Despite Vicky’s mindforks with the suit, she had never felt closer to Michael than she did after witnessing how far he’ll go to save her.

The old demon looks pensive for a moment.

“I lied to you.” He admits.

Eleanor blinks at him.

“I told you that I’d give back all your memories when we returned to the afterlife.” He explains, cautiously; “There was one I didn’t put back in your head because I was too embarrassed to let you see it. Just the one, I swear. I was actually going to give it back to you before, when you were resting at Mindy’s, but then Glenn showed up.”

She remembers him leaving, before their movie had ended, getting up and rushing out. She’d been afraid that she’d said something to scare him away.

Then she found the Minion plushie he’d been bringing back. Was it still in Mindy’s spare room?

She hoped Derek hadn’t put his hands on it.

“What was the memory?” She asks. She wants to know, whatever it was.

Michael doesn’t hesitate. He waves his hand in front of her eyes, unlocking the memory of Reboot 1.2 back into her mind.

It falls perfectly back into her head like a puzzle piece she hadn’t noticed was missing.

_“I’M A DEMON!...DEMONS CAN’T CHANGE, IDIOT! DEMONS CANNNOT HAVE…FRIENDS!”_

She barely feels any different when it’s settled. Michael is looking at her as if expecting a huge fallout.

“Wow…” Eleanor muses, frowning.

“Yeah. I know.”

“You really gave up on the whole self-grooming thing after a while, didn’t ya.” Eleanor chortles. His hair had been so out of sorts and his eyebrows in desperate need of plucking, not to mention the five o’clock shadow.

Michael purses his lips; “Why is it no one ever focuses on the right thing when I give them their memories back?”

“Huh? Oh, you mean the whole ‘I’m a demon, roar! No friends! Grr!’ schtick?” Eleanor asks, complete with pretend growls; “Dude, I already knew all that. Why were you embarrassed about this one? You were way crueller that time you tore me and Chidi apart.”

“That was different. That was me being an actual demon and not giving a crab about either of you.” Michael tries to explain; “But that time? Even though the version of you was from the first reboot, the version of me was hundreds of reboots later. There would only be a handful left until I gave up and joined you guys. That was the first time I ever…lost control in front of you. Because it was the first time I ever thought, maybe, just maybe…I might not have to be…a monster. And you were willing to try to help me even then…”

He struggles to go on. Eleanor watches him, quietly, letting him get it out.

“…But I just…lost my temper and threw that chance away.” He admits with deep regret; “You told me that day at the arcade meant nothing to me. It wasn’t supposed to…But it did. I kept that stupid yellow toddler all those years, but I never looked at it until that day…And I remembered. I remembered when it had all started to change. Because you called me ‘friend’.”

She smiles, feeling a little choked up. Michael showing her this felt as though he was revealing a part of himself that was far more intimate than if he took off his own skin suit. She didn’t need to see the Fire Squid. She’d seen the true being he was in that memory. There had been no monster. Just a lonely, scared and confused demon needing a bit more time to work things out and a push in the right direction. Just like her.

Eleanor doesn’t know what to say to reassure him or rationalize it for him. She’s far too tired. Perhaps this is one time where the least that is said, the better. True joy in the mystery.

“Hey Janet.”

“Hey, what’s up.” The not-robot appears with a yawn beside her.

“Oh, were you…sleeping?” Eleanor looks apologetic.

“No, I was just really comfy with Jason. What do you need?”

“Would you mind bringing me-.”

Janet doesn’t need her to ask. She hands Eleanor the minion plushie, seemingly having anticipated this for a while. She also produces one of Tahani’s faux fur blankets.

“You’ll need this as well if you guys are staying out here. Night night.” She says, caringly, before binging back out of sight again.

Eleanor looks at Michael; “Are we staying here?”

“For as long as you want.” He tells her.

Eleanor smiles at the silly plushie in her hands and then at back at her friend.

“Still the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”

He smiles at her; “No.”

It’s at that moment, Eleanor feels something begin to ground her back into this reality. She can see in Michael’s eyes a promise that, if the Bad Place tried to come for her or any of them again, he would not rest until making sure they were safe. That’s if they could come through him in the first place. Or, more likely, a Janet kicking ash.

Her mind will always be slightly cracked. The scars on her body might not go away completely, despite appearances. But she’ll only allow the pain to be a reminder of how much she’s loved at the end of it all.

Michael takes the blanket and wraps it around Eleanor, bringing her back to rest against him as they sit beneath the stars he designed himself. He wraps his arms around her and she clutches the plushie against her chest, nestling her head against his front, feeling the silk of his bow-tie against her brow. The chill, night air doesn’t bother her now. Not with the warmth of one of her friend’s blankets and the body heat of a billion-year-old fire squid keeping her comfy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading! Please kudos, comment etc, let me know what you think. And of course, stay safe humans.


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